2062 Aten
From Infogalactic: the planetary knowledge core
Orbital diagram of the Aten asteroid (epoch: Sept. 2013)
|
|||||||||||||||||
| Discovery | |||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Discovered by | Eleanor F. Helin | ||||||||||||||||
| Discovery site | Palomar | ||||||||||||||||
| Discovery date | January 7, 1976 | ||||||||||||||||
| Designations | |||||||||||||||||
|
Named after
|
Aten | ||||||||||||||||
| 1976 AA | |||||||||||||||||
| Aten asteroid | |||||||||||||||||
| Orbital characteristics[1] | |||||||||||||||||
| Epoch December 31, 2011 (JD 2455926.5) |
|||||||||||||||||
| Aphelion | 1.1434 AU (171.05 Gm) | ||||||||||||||||
| Perihelion | 0.7901 AU (118.20 Gm) | ||||||||||||||||
| 0.9668 AU (144.63 Gm) | |||||||||||||||||
| Eccentricity | 0.18272 | ||||||||||||||||
| 347.213 d (0.95 yr) |
|||||||||||||||||
|
Average orbital speed
|
30.04 km/s | ||||||||||||||||
| 172.27° | |||||||||||||||||
| Inclination | 18.934° | ||||||||||||||||
| 108.60° | |||||||||||||||||
| 148.04° | |||||||||||||||||
| Earth MOID | 0.1131 AU (16.92 Gm) | ||||||||||||||||
| Physical characteristics | |||||||||||||||||
| Dimensions | 1.1 km (0.68 mi)[1] | ||||||||||||||||
| Mass | 7.6×1011 kg | ||||||||||||||||
|
Mean density
|
2 ? g/cm³ | ||||||||||||||||
| 0.000 25 m/s² | |||||||||||||||||
| 0.000 48 km/s | |||||||||||||||||
| 40.77 hr[1] | |||||||||||||||||
| Albedo | 0.26[1] | ||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
Spectral type
|
S[1] | ||||||||||||||||
| 16.80[1] | |||||||||||||||||
2062 Aten (/ˈɑːtən/)[3] is an asteroid that was discovered at the Palomar Mountain Observatory by Eleanor F. Helin, who was the principal scientist for the NEAT (Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking) project until she retired in 2002. It is named after Aten, the Egyptian god of the solar disk.
Aten was the first asteroid found to have a semi-major orbital axis of less than one astronomical unit. A new category of asteroids was thus created, the Atens. As of July 2004 about 16 Atens were numbered and some 212 were provisional,[4] the unnumbered Atens ranged from what was then 1989 VA to 2004 MD6.
