209 Dido
Encyclopedia
209 Dido is a very large main-belt
Asteroid belt
The asteroid belt is the region of the Solar System located roughly between the orbits of the planets Mars and Jupiter. It is occupied by numerous irregularly shaped bodies called asteroids or minor planets...

 asteroid
Asteroid
Asteroids are a class of small Solar System bodies in orbit around the Sun. They have also been called planetoids, especially the larger ones...

. It is classified as a C-type asteroid
C-type asteroid
C-type asteroids are carbonaceous asteroids. They are the most common variety, forming around 75% of known asteroids, and an even higher percentage in the outer part of the asteroid belt beyond 2.7 AU, which is dominated by this asteroid type...

 and is probably composed of privitive carbonaceous
Carbonate
In chemistry, a carbonate is a salt of carbonic acid, characterized by the presence of the carbonate ion, . The name may also mean an ester of carbonic acid, an organic compound containing the carbonate group C2....

 materials. Like many asteroids of its type, it has an extremely low albedo
Albedo
Albedo , or reflection coefficient, is the diffuse reflectivity or reflecting power of a surface. It is defined as the ratio of reflected radiation from the surface to incident radiation upon it...

.

It was discovered by C. H. F. Peters
Christian Heinrich Friedrich Peters
Christian Heinrich Friedrich Peters was a German-American astronomer, and one of the first to discover asteroids....

 on October 22, 1879 in Clinton, New York
Clinton, Oneida County, New York
Clinton is a village in Oneida County, New York, United States. The population was 1,952 at the 2000 census. It was named for George Clinton, a royal governor of the colony of New York....

 and was named after the mythical Carthaginian
Carthage
Carthage , implying it was a 'new Tyre') is a major urban centre that has existed for nearly 3,000 years on the Gulf of Tunis, developing from a Phoenician colony of the 1st millennium BC...

 queen Dido.
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK