8 Flora
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Template:Minor Planet 8 Flora (flor'-a) is a large, bright main belt asteroid. Image:Moon and Asteroids 1 to 10 at 10 km per px.png
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Discovery and naming
Flora was discovered by J. R. Hind on October 18, 1847. It was his second asteroid discovery after 7 Iris.
The name Flora was proposed by John Herschel, from Flora, the Latin goddess of flowers and gardens, wife of Zephyrus (the personnification of the West wind), mother of Spring, and whose Greek equivalent is Chloris (who has her own asteroid, 410 Chloris).
Characteristics
Lightcurve analysis indicates that Flora's pole points towards ecliptic coordinates (β, λ) = (16°, 160°) with a 10° uncertainty [4]. This gives an axial tilt of 78°.
Flora is the parent body of the Flora family of asteroids, and by far the largest member, comprising about 80% of the total mass of this family. Nevertheless, Flora was almost certainly disrupted by the impact/s that formed the family, and is probably a gravitational aggregate of most of the pieces.
Flora's spectrum indicates that its surface composition is a mixture of silicate rock (including pyroxene and olivine) and nickel-iron metal. Flora, and the whole Flora family generally, are good candidates for being the parent bodies of the L chondrite meteorites [6]. This meteorite type comprises about 38% of all meteorites impacting the Earth.
Trivia
During an observation on March 25, 1917, 8 Flora was mistaken for the star TU Leonis, which led to that star's classification as a U Geminorum cataclysmic variable star. This mistake was uncovered only in 1995 [1].
Aspects
References
- Supplemental IRAS Minor Planet Survey
- Planetary Data System Small Bodies Node, lightcurve parameters
- L. D. Schmadel et al TU Leonis = (8) Flora: the non-existence of a U Geminorum star, Astronomy & Astrophysics, Vol. 312, p. 496 (1996).
- J. Torppa et al Shapes and rotational properties of thirty asteroids from photometric data, Icarus, Vol. 164, p. 346 (2003).
- G. A. Krasinsky et al Hidden Mass in the Asteroid Belt, Icarus, Vol. 158, p. 98 (2002).
- D. Nesvorný et al The Flora Family: A Case of the Dynamically Dispersed Collisional Swarm?, Icarus, Vol. 157, p. 155 (2002).
- IAUC 6174]
External links
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de:Flora (Asteroid) es:(8) Flora fr:(8) Flore it:8 Flora ja:フローラ (小惑星) nn:8 Flora pl:8 Flora pt:8 Flora sk:8 Flora