515 Athalia
main-belt asteroid
515 Athalia, provisional designation 1903 ME, is a carbonaceous Themistian asteroid from the outer regions of the asteroid belt, approximately 40 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered on 20 September 1903, by German astronomer Max Wolf at the Heidelberg Observatory in southwest Germany. The asteroid was named after the ancient Judahite queen Athaliah.
Orbit and classification
Athalia is a Themistian asteroid that belongs to the Themis family (602), a very large family of carbonaceous asteroids, named after 24 Themis. It orbits the Sun in the outer main belt at a distance of 2.6–3.7 AU once every 5 years and 6 months (2,016 days). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.17 and an inclination of 2°. The body's observation arc begins at Heidelberg with its official discovery observation in 1903.
Physical characteristics
Spectral type
In the SMASS classification, the asteroid is a Cb-subtype, that transitions between the carbonaceous C-type to the B-type asteroids. In the Tholen classification, no type could be assigned to Athalia since its spectrum was inconsistent as it resembled that of an S-type asteroid, while its albedo was far too low for that spectral type.
Rotation period
In October 2015, a rotational lightcurve of Athalia was obtained from photometric observations by American astronomer Frederick Pilcher at the Organ Mesa Observatory (G50) in New Mexico, United States.
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This entry incorporates text from “515 Athalia” 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.