83_Beatrix

83 Beatrix

83 Beatrix

Main-belt asteroid

Beatrix (minor planet designation: 83 Beatrix) is a fairly large asteroid orbiting in the inner part of the main asteroid belt. It was discovered by Annibale de Gasparis on April 26, 1865. It was his last asteroid discovery. A diameter of at least 68 kilometres (42 mi) was determined from the Beatrician stellar occultation observed on June 15, 1983. It is named for Beatrice Portinari,[4] beloved of Dante Alighieri and immortalized by him in La Vita Nuova and The Divine Comedy.

Quick Facts Discovery, Discovered by ...

On February 16, 2001, an occultation of a magnitude +9.09 star by this asteroid was observed from three locations. The resulting chords matched an elliptical profile with a mean radius of 35.9 km. The observers noted some dimming and flickering at the beginning of the event, which may indicate the star was binary or the asteroid has an irregular shape. Previous occultations had been observed in 1983 and 1990, which produced a much larger size estimate of 81.4 km.[5]

Beatrician orbit

References

  1. [1]
    Noah Webster (1884) A Practical Dictionary of the English Language
  2. [2]
    "Beatrician". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
  3. [3]
    Asteroid Data Sets Archived 2009-12-17 at the Wayback Machine
  4. [4]
    (83) Beatrix In: Dictionary of Minor Planet Names. Springer. 2003. doi:10.1007/978-3-540-29925-7_84. ISBN 978-3-540-29925-7.
  5. [5]
    Povenmire, H.; Bookamer, R. (September 2001), "The Feb. 16, 2001 Asteroid (83) Beatrix Occultation", Meteoritics & Planetary Science, 36: A166, Bibcode:2001M&PSA..36R.166P.


Stub icon

This article about an asteroid native to the asteroid belt is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
Share this article:

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article 83_Beatrix, and is written by contributors. Text is available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International License; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.