1076 Viola , is the pronunciation of the musical instrument, rather than the flower that this asteroid is named after. provisional designation , is an asteroid from the inner regions of the asteroid belt, approximately 22 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered on 5 October 1926, by German astronomer Karl Reinmuth at the Heidelberg Observatory in southwest Germany. The asteroid was named after the flowering plant Viola.
Orbit and classification
Viola is a non-family asteroid of the main belt's background population when applying the Hierarchical Clustering Method to its proper orbital elements. The asteroid has also been classified as a member of the Nysa–Polana complex, a collection of overlapping asteroid families in the inner main belt. The family is located near the Kirkwood gap (3:1 orbital resonance with Jupiter), a depleted zone that separates the central main belt.
Viola orbits the Sun in the inner asteroid belt at a distance of 2.1–2.8 AU once every 3 years and 11 months (1,422 days; semi-major axis of 2.47 AU). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.14 and an inclination of 3° with respect to the ecliptic. The body's observation arc begins at Heidelberg in January 1951, or more than 24 years after its official discovery observation.
Physical characteristics
In the Tholen classification, Viola is a rare F-type asteroid, while in the SMASS taxonomy, it is classified as a common, carbonaceous C-type.
Rotation period
In the 1980s, a rotational lightcurve of Viola was obtained from photometric observations by American astronomer Richard Binzel. Lightcurve analysis gave a well-defined rotation period of 7.336 hours with a brightness amplitude of 0.12 magnitude (). A tentative period of 14.4 hours was measured by French amateur astronomer René Roy in January 2009, but later retracted from the LCDB ().
Diameter and albedo
According to the surveys carried out by the Infrared Astronomical Satellite IRAS, the Japanese Akari satellite and the NEOWISE mission of NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, Viola measures between 21.412 and 26.39 kilometers in diameter and its surface has an albedo between 0.032 and 0.0428.
The Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link adopts the results obtained by IRAS, that is, an albedo of 0.0415 and a diameter of 22.63 kilometers based on an absolute magnitude of 12.30.
Naming
This minor planet was named after Viola, a genus of flowering plants within the violet family. The official naming citation was mentioned in The Names of the Minor Planets by Paul Herget in 1955 ().
Reinmuth's flowers
Due to his many discoveries, Karl Reinmuth submitted a large list of 66 newly named asteroids in the early 1930s. The list covered his discoveries with numbers between and . This list also contained a sequence of 28 asteroids, starting with 1054 Forsytia, that were all named after plants, in particular flowering plants.
References
External links Asteroid Lightcurve Database (LCDB), query form (info ) Dictionary of Minor Planet Names, Google books Asteroids and comets rotation curves, CdR – Observatoire de Genève, Raoul Behrend Discovery Circumstances: Numbered Minor Planets (1)-(5000) – Minor Planet Center