45 Eugenia
main-belt asteroid
45 Eugenia is a large asteroid of the asteroid belt. It is famed as one of the first asteroids to be found to have a moon orbiting it. It was also the second triple asteroid to be discovered, after 87 Sylvia.
Discovery
Eugenia was discovered on 27 June 1857 by the Franco–German amateur astronomer Hermann Goldschmidt. His instrument of discovery was a four-inch aperture telescope located in his sixth-floor apartment in the 6th arrondissement of Paris. It was the 45th minor planet to be discovered. The preliminary orbital elements were computed by Wilhelm Forster in Berlin, based on three observations in July 1857.
The asteroid was named by its discoverer after Empress Eugénie de Montijo, the wife of Napoleon III. It was the first asteroid to be definitely named after a real person, rather than a figure from classical legend.
Physical characteristics
Eugenia is a large asteroid, with a diameter of 214 km. It is an F-type asteroid, which means that it is very dark in colouring (darker than soot) with a carbonaceous composition.
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This entry incorporates text from “45 Eugenia” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.