21 Lutetia

21 Lutetia is a large asteroid in the asteroid belt of an unusual spectral type. It measures about 100 kilometers in diameter (120 km along its major axis). It was discovered in 1852 by Hermann Goldschmidt, and is named after Lutetia, the Latin name of Paris.

Lutetia has an irregular shape and is heavily cratered, with the largest impact crater reaching 45 km in diameter. The surface is geologically heterogeneous and is intersected by a system of grooves and scarps, which are thought to be fractures. It has a high average density, meaning that it is made of metal-rich rock.

The Rosetta probe passed within 3,162 km (1,965 mi) of Lutetia in July 2010. It was the largest asteroid visited by a spacecraft until Dawn arrived at Vesta in July 2011.

Discovery and exploration

Lutetia was discovered on November 15, 1852, by Hermann Goldschmidt from the balcony of his apartment in Paris. A preliminary orbit for the asteroid was computed in November–December 1852 by German astronomer Georg Rümker and others. In 1903, it was photographed at opposition by Edward Pickering at Harvard College Observatory. He computed an opposition magnitude of 10.8.

Lutetia

Coordinates: 48°51′N 2°21′E / 48.85°N 2.35°E / 48.85; 2.35

Lutetia (also Lutetia Parisiorum in Latin, Lukotekia before, in French Lutèce) was a town in pre-Roman and Roman Gaul. The Gallo-Roman city was a forerunner of the re-established Merovingian town that is the ancestor of present-day Paris.

Eponymy

The city was referred to as "Λουκοτοκία" by Strabon, "Λευκοτεκία" by Ptolemeus and "Lutetia" by Julius Caesar. The origin of this name is uncertain.

The name may contain the Celtic root *luco-t-, which means "mouse" and -ek(t)ia, meaning "the mice" and which can be found today in the Breton word logod, the Welsh llygod, and the Irish luch.

Alternatively, it may derive from another Celtic root, luto- or luteuo-, which means "marsh" or "swamp" and which survives today in the Gaelic loth ("marsh") and the Breton loudour ("dirty"). As such, it would be related to other place names in Europe including Lutudarum (Derbyshire, England); Lodève (Luteua) and Ludesse (France); and Lutitia (Germany).

Lutetia (disambiguation)

Lutetia may refer to:

See also

Jan van Krimpen

Jan van Krimpen (12 February 1892 in Gouda – 20 October 1958 in Haarlem) was a Dutch typographer and type designer. He worked for the printing house Koninklijke Joh. Enschedé; he also worked with Monotype in England, who issued or reissued many of his designs outside the Netherlands.

Type designs

Van Krimpen's type designs are elegant book typefaces, originally made for manual printing and the Monotype machine. Although a good few have been digitised (Romulus, Haarlemmer, Spectrum), the typefaces are only rarely used in publications. Van Krimpen had a strong interest in the sharp-seriffed designs of traditional Dutch Baroque type design, although he preferred to avoid direct revivals. His approach was continued by Sem Hartz, his successor at Enschedé, and has been of interest to more recent Dutch designers such as Martin Majoor.

Of special note is the Romulus 'superfamily', consisting of a seriffed font, a cursive, a chancery italic (Cancelleresca Bastarda), a sans-serif, and a Greek in a range of weights. Such an extensive family would have been a first, comparable to today's Scala family by Majoor. The outbreak of the Second World War disrupted the project before completion. After the war, Van Krimpen was not interested in resuming it.