Asteroid 349 Dembowska is named in honor of the Baron Hercules Dembowski, an Italian astronomer who made significant contributions to research on double and multiple stars. The asteroid was discovered over a century ago on December 9, 1892, by the French astronomer Auguste Charlois

Auguste Charlois

Auguste Honoré Charlois was a French astronomer who discovered 99 asteroids while working in Nice.His first discovery was the asteroid 267 Tirza in 1887...

 while working at the observatory in Nice

Nice

Nice is the fifth most populous city in France, after Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Toulouse, with a population of 348,721 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Nice extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of more than 955,000 on an area of...

, France. Located just prior to the prominent 7:3 resonance with Jupiter, 349 Dembowska is among the larger asteroids in the main belt with an estimated diameter of ~140 km. It has a rotational period of 4.7012 hours, and is classified as an R-Type asteroid due to the presence of strong absorption lines in olivine and pyroxene with little or no metals.

349 Dembowska is a large main-belt 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...

 with an unusually high albedo

Geometric albedo

The geometric albedo of an astronomical body is the ratio of its actual brightness at zero phase angle to that of an idealized flat, fully reflecting, diffusively scattering disk with the same cross-section....

 of 0.384. Of the asteroids with a diameter greater than 75 km, only 4 Vesta

4 Vesta

Vesta, formally designated 4 Vesta, is one of the largest asteroids, with a mean diameter of about . It was discovered by Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers on March 29, 1807, and is named after the Roman virgin goddess of home and hearth, Vesta....

 has a higher known albedo.

It is classified as an R-type asteroid

R-type asteroid

R-type asteroids are moderately bright, relatively uncommon inner-belt asteroids that are spectrally intermediate between the V and A-type asteroids. The spectrum shows distinct olivine and pyroxene features at 1 and 2 micrometres, with a possibility of plagioclase...

 and may have undergone partial melting/differentiation

Planetary differentiation

In planetary science, planetary differentiation is the process of separating out different constituents of a planetary body as a consequence of their physical or chemical behaviour, where the body develops into compositionally distinct layers; the denser materials of a planet sink to the center,...

.

Dembowska and 16 Psyche

16 Psyche

16 Psyche )is one of the ten most massive main-belt asteroids. It is over 200 kilometers in diameter and contains a little less than 1% of the mass of the entire asteroid belt. It is the most massive of the metallic M-type asteroids....

have orbits that repeat themselves almost exactly every five years in respect to their position to the Sun and Earth.

There was on occultation on October 31, 2006, and on December 5, 2007.

External links

• Orbital simulation from JPL (Java) / Ephemeris