9999 Wiles

Discovery

Wiles was discovered on 29 September 1973, by Dutch astronomer couple Ingrid and Cornelis van Houten at Leiden and Tom Gehrels at Palomar Observatory, California, United States. The body's observation arc begins at Palomar, 10 days prior to its official discovery observation.

The survey designation "T-2" stands for the second Palomar–Leiden Trojan survey, named after the fruitful collaboration of the Palomar and Leiden Observatory in the 1960s and 1970s. Gehrels used Palomar's Samuel Oschin telescope (also known as the 48-inch Schmidt Telescope), and shipped the photographic plates to Ingrid and Cornelis van Houten at Leiden Observatory where astrometry was carried out. The trio are credited with the discovery of several thousand minor planets.

Classification and orbit

The asteroid is a member of the Koronis family, a collisional group consisting of a few hundred known bodies with nearly ecliptical orbits. It orbits the Sun in the outer main-belt at a distance of 2.6–3.0 AU once every 4 years and 9 months (1,747 days). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.07 and an inclination of 3° with respect to the ecliptic.

Physical characteristics

Wiles spectral type has been characterized as a LS-type, an intermediary between the common stony and rather rare L-type asteroid. Alternatively, and contrary to the body's determined albedo (see below), it is also considered to be a carbonaceous C-type asteroid.

Rotation period

In early 2014, two rotational lightcurves of Wiles were obtained from photometric observations in the R-band at the Palomar Transient Factory in California. Lightcurve analysis gave a rotation period of 3.47 and 3.482 hours with a brightness variation of 0.13 and 0.15 magnitude ().

Diameter and albedo

According to the survey carried out by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer with its subsequent NEOWISE mission, Wiles measures 7.148 kilometers in diameter and its surface has an albedo of 0.262, while the Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link assumes a standard albedo for members of the Koronis family of 0.24, and calculates a diameter of 17.12 kilometers with an absolute magnitude of 11.0.

Naming

This minor planet was named after of Andrew J. Wiles (born 1953), a British mathematician and professor at Princeton University, who is best known for proving Fermat's Last Theorem in 1993. The naming was proposed by Lutz D. Schmadel, who also prepared the citation. It was published on 2 April 1999 (M.P.C. 34356).

References

References

1. Gianluca Masi. "Search for Unusual Spectroscopic Candidates Among 40313 minor planets from the 3rd Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Moving Object Catalog".