86 Semele
Minorplanetyes
Background
  1. D6D6D6
DiscovererFriedrich Tietjen
DiscoveredJanuary 4, 1866
Mpc name(86) Semele
Pronounced/ˈsɛmᵻlə/[1]
AdjectiveSemelean /sɛmᵻˈleːən/[2]
Named afterSemele
Mp categoryMain belt
EpochDecember 31, 2006 (JD 2454100.5)
Semimajor465.884 million km (3.114 AU)
Perihelion369.116 million km (2.467 AU)
Aphelion562.652 million km (3.761 AU)
Eccentricity0.208
Period2,007.366 day
Inclination4.822°
Asc node86.452°
Arg peri307.886°
Mean anomaly264.875°
Avg speed16.69 km/s
Dimensions120.6 km
Mass1.8×1018 kg
Surface grav0.0337 m/s²
Escape velocity0.0638 km/s
Rotation16.641 ± 0.001 hours[3]
Abs magnitude8.54
Albedo0.047 [4]

86 Semele is a large and very dark main-belt asteroid with an orbital period of 5.5 years. It is rotating with a period of 16.6 hours, and varies in magnitude by 0.13 during each cycle.[3] This object is classified as a C-type asteroid and is probably composed of carbonates.

Semele was discovered by German astronomer Friedrich Tietjen on January 4, 1866.[5] 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.[6]

References

  1. ^ "Semele". Lexico UK English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on 1 March 2020.
  2. ^ Robert Calverley Trevelyan (1898) Mallow and Asphadel, p. 4.
  3. ^ Pilcher, Frederick (July 2020). "Lightcurves and Rotation Periods of 83 Beatrix, 86 Semele, 118 Peitho 153 Hilda, 527 Euryanthe, and 549 Jessonda". Bulletin of the Minor Planets Section of the Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers. 47 (3): 192–195. Bibcode:2020MPBu...47..192P
  4. ^ Asteroid Data Sets Archived 2009-12-17 at the Wayback Machine
  5. ^ "Numbered Minor Planets 1–5000", Discovery Circumstances, IAU Minor Planet center, retrieved 2013-04-07
  6. ^ Šidlichovský, M. (1999), "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, pp. 297–308, Bibcode:1999esra.conf..297S