8373 Stephengould
Main-belt asteroid
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8373 Stephengould (1992 AB) is an outer main-belt binary asteroid[5] discovered on 1 January 1992 by Carolyn S. Shoemaker and Eugene Merle Shoemaker at Palomar Observatory.[1] The asteroid was named after the Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould. The asteroid has a very high inclination, having the second highest inclination of any of the first 10,000 discovered asteroids in the asteroid belt, after 2938 Hopi.
| Discovery[1] | |
|---|---|
| Discovered by | |
| Discovery site | Palomar |
| Discovery date | 1 January 1992 |
| Designations | |
Named after | Stephen Jay Gould |
| 1992 AB | |
| Orbital characteristics[4][2] | |
| Epoch 13 January 2016 (JD 2457400.5) | |
| Uncertainty parameter 0 | |
| Observation arc | 8844 days (24.21 yr) |
| Aphelion | 5.09996 AU (762.943 Gm) |
| Perihelion | 1.45970 AU (218.368 Gm) |
| 3.27983 AU (490.656 Gm) | |
| Eccentricity | 0.554947 |
| 5.94 yr (2169.6 d) | |
| 358.004° | |
| 0° 9m 57.352s / day | |
| Inclination | 40.7923° |
| 88.8722° | |
| 55.5019° | |
| Known satellites | 1 |
| Jupiter MOID | 1.4741 AU (220.52 Gm) |
| TJupiter | 2.587 |
| Physical characteristics | |
| 4.435 h (0.1848 d) | |
| 14.0 | |
Stephengould is one of few strongly unstable asteroids located near the 2:1 mean motion resonance with the gas giant Jupiter, that corresponds to one of the prominent Kirkwood gaps in the asteroid belt.[3]
The asteroid has a moon orbiting it, discovered in 2010 with an orbital period of 1 day, 10 hours, and 9 minutes.[5]
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