86 Semele

86 Semele
Discovery
Discovered by Friedrich Tietjen
Discovery date January 4, 1866
Designations
Named after
 Semele
Main belt
Orbital characteristics[1]
Epoch December 31, 2006 (JD 2454100.5)
Aphelion 562.652 Gm (3.761 AU)
Perihelion 369.116 Gm (2.467 AU)
465.884 Gm (3.114 AU)
Eccentricity 0.208
2,007.366 d (5.50 a)
16.69 km/s
264.875°
Inclination 4.822°
86.452°
307.886°
Physical characteristics
Dimensions 120.6 km
Mass 1.8×1018 kg
0.0337 m/s²
0.0638 km/s
Albedo 0.047 [2]
Temperature ~158 K
Spectral type
 C
8.54

    86 Semele (/ˈsɛmɨliː/ SEM-i-lee) is a large and very dark main-belt asteroid. It is probably composed of carbonates. Semele was discovered by German astronomer Friedrich Tietjen on January 4, 1866.[3] It was his first and only asteroid discovery. It is named after Semele, the mother of Dionysus in Greek mythology.

    The orbit of 86 Semele places it in a 13:6 mean motion resonance with the planet Jupiter. The computed Lyapunov time for this asteroid is only 6,000 years, indicating that it occupies a chaotic orbit that will change randomly over time because of gravitational perturbations of the planets. This Lyapunov time is the second lowest among the first 100 named minor planets.[4]

    References

    1. ↑ Yeomans, Donald K., "86 Semele", JPL Small-Body Database Browser (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory), retrieved 2013-04-07.
    2. ↑ Asteroid Data Sets
    3. ↑ "Numbered Minor Planets 1–5000", Discovery Circumstances (IAU Minor Planet center), retrieved 2013-04-07.
    4. ↑ Šidlichovský, M. (1999), Svoren, J.; Pittich, E. M.; Rickman, H., eds., "Resonances and chaos in the asteroid belt", Evolution and source regions of asteroids and comets : proceedings of the 173rd colloquium of the International Astronomical Union, held in Tatranska Lomnica, Slovak Republic, August 24–28, 1998: 297–308, Bibcode:1999esra.conf..297S.