677 Aaltje
677 Aaltje is a main-belt minor planet orbiting the Sun, discovered by August Kopff at Heidelberg on January 18, 1909. It was named after the Dutch singer Aaltje Noordewier-Reddingius.
This object has a geometric albedo of 0.2794. Photometric observations during 2008 showed a rotation period of 16.6076 ± 0.0006 hours and a brightness variation of 0.30 ± 0.02 in magnitude.[2]
677 Aaltje is orbiting within the 7/3 Kirkwood gap. This means it has an 7:3 orbital resonance with Jupiter, completing seven orbits for every three orbits of the planet. For smaller objects, this would typically lead to orbital instability, causing it to shift to a different orbital period. However, 677 Aaltje is too large for its orbit to have been moved by more than about 0.01 AU over the lifetime of the Solar System. What is more likely is that orbital interactions with the dwarf planet Ceres may have shifted it to the present-day orbit—the orbit of 677 Aaltje leads it into relatively close encounters with Ceres.[3]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 "JPL Small-Body Database Browser: 677 Aaltje (1909 FR)". Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
- ↑ Oey, Julian (October 2009), "Lightcurve Analysis of Asteroids from Leura and Kingsgrove Observatory in the Second Half of 2008", Bulletin of the Minor Planets Section of the Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers 36 (4): 162–164, Bibcode:2009MPBu...36..162O
- ↑ Tsiganis, K.; Varvoglis, H.; Morbidelli, A. (November 2003), "Short-lived asteroids in the 7/3 Kirkwood gap and their relationship to the Koronis and Eos families", Icarus 166 (1): 131–140, Bibcode:2003Icar..166..131T, doi:10.1016/j.icarus.2003.08.007
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