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1393 Sofala

Main-belt asteroid

Field	Value
minorplanet	yes
name	1393 Sofala
background	#D6D6D6
discovery_ref
discoverer	C. Jackson
discovery_site	Johannesburg Obs.
discovered	25 May 1936
mpc_name	(1393) Sofala
alt_names	1936 KD1928 FB
1951 GL1956 TE
1958 CA1971 SJ
1975 UB
named_after	Sofala
(Province in Mozambique)
mp_category	main-belt(inner)
Vestianbackground
orbit_ref
epoch	4 September 2017 (JD 2458000.5)
uncertainty	0
observation_arc	89.54 yr (32,703 days)
aphelion	2.6997 AU
perihelion	2.1685 AU
semimajor	2.4341 AU
eccentricity	0.1091
period	3.80 yr (1,387 days)
mean_anomaly	146.78°
mean_motion	/ day
inclination	5.8476°
asc_node	56.701°
arg_peri	183.46°
dimensions	km
11.30 km (calculated)
rotation	h (poor)
h
h
albedo	0.20 (assumed)

spectral_type	S (assumed)
abs_magnitude	(R)12.0012.1

1951 GL1956 TE 1958 CA1971 SJ 1975 UB (Province in Mozambique) Vestianbackground 11.30 km (calculated) h h

1393 Sofala, provisional designation , is a Vestian asteroid from the inner regions of the asteroid belt, approximately 11 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered on 25 May 1936, by South African astronomer Cyril Jackson at the Union Observatory in Johannesburg. The asteroid was named after the province of Sofala in Mozambique.

Orbit and classification

Sofala is a member of the Vesta family (401), the second-largest asteroid family of the main-belt by number of members. However, it is also considered to be a non-family asteroid of the main belt's background population when applying the Hierarchical Clustering Method to its proper orbital elements. It orbits the Sun in the inner asteroid belt at a distance of 2.2–2.7 AU once every 3 years and 10 months (1,387 days). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.11 and an inclination of 6° with respect to the ecliptic.

The asteroid was first identified as at Heidelberg Observatory in March 1928. The body's observation arc begins with its official discovery observation at Johannesburg in 1936.

Physical characteristics

Sofala is an assumed stony S-type asteroid.

Rotation period

The asteroid has an ambiguous lightcurve. While a lightcurve, obtained at the Palomar Transient Factory in September 2013, gave a rotation period of 108.259 hours with a brightness amplitude of 0.48 magnitude (), another lightcurve modeled from combined dense and sparse photometry gave a sidereal period of 16.5931 hours.(). If the first result were correct, Sofala would be one of few hundred known slow rotators with a period above 100 hours. The Lightcurve Data Base, however, adopts the shorter period from the modeled lightcurve. A third lightcurve with a period of 7.8 hours by René Roy from 2008 has received a poor rating.

Diameter and albedo

According to the survey carried out by the NEOWISE mission of NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, Sofala measures between 11.21 kilometers in diameter and its surface has an albedo of 0.223.

The Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link assumes a standard albedo for stony asteroids of 0.20 and calculates a diameter of 11.30 kilometers based on an absolute magnitude of 12.1.

Naming

This minor planet was named after Sofala Province in central-eastern Mozambique. It is the country's largest province. Its capital city is Beira after which the Mars-crosser 1474 Beira, another discovery by Cyril Jackson, is named. The official was published by the Minor Planet Center in April 1953 (M.P.C. 909).

References

Info: Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

vesta-asteroids discoveries-by-cyril-jackson-(astronomer) named-minor-planets astronomical-objects-discovered-in-1936

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