14827 Hypnos is an Apollo

Apollo asteroid

The Apollo asteroids are a group of near-Earth asteroids named after 1862 Apollo, the first asteroid of this group to be discovered by Karl Wilhelm Reinmuth...

 near-Earth asteroid (NEA) discovered by Carolyn S. Shoemaker

Carolyn S. Shoemaker

Carolyn Jean Spellmann Shoemaker is an American astronomer and is a co-discoverer of Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9. She holds the record for most comets discovered by an individual.- Personal life :...

 and Eugene Merle Shoemaker

Eugene Merle Shoemaker

Eugene Merle Shoemaker , American geologist, was one of the founders of the fields of planetary science....

 at Palomar Observatory

Palomar Observatory

Palomar Observatory is a privately owned observatory located in San Diego County, California, southeast of Pasadena's Mount Wilson Observatory, in the Palomar Mountain Range. At approximately elevation, it is owned and operated by the California Institute of Technology...

 on May 5, 1986. It is named after Hypnos

Hypnos

In Greek mythology, Hypnos was the personification of sleep; the Roman equivalent was known as Somnus. His twin was Thánatos ; their mother was the primordial goddess Nyx . His palace was a dark cave where the sun never shines. At the entrance were a number of poppies and other hypnogogic plants...

, the Greek god of sleep.

Hypnos may be the nucleus

Comet nucleus

The nucleus is the solid, central part of a comet, popularly termed a dirty snowball. A cometary nucleus is composed of rock, dust, and frozen gases. When heated by the Sun, the gases sublimate and produce an atmosphere surrounding the nucleus known as the coma...

 of an extinct comet

Extinct comet

Extinct comets are comets that have expelled most of their volatile ice and have little left to form a tail or coma. The volatile material contained in the comet nucleus evaporates away, and all that remains is inert rock or rubble that can resemble an asteroid. Comets may go through a transition...

 that is covered by a crust several centimeters thick that prevents any remaining volatiles

Volatility (chemistry)

In chemistry and physics, volatility is the tendency of a substance to vaporize. Volatility is directly related to a substance's vapor pressure. At a given temperature, a substance with higher vapor pressure vaporizes more readily than a substance with a lower vapor pressure.The term is primarily...

 from outgassing

Outgassing

Outgassing is the release of a gas that was dissolved, trapped, frozen or absorbed in some material. As an example, research has shown how the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere has sometimes been linked to ocean outgassing...

. Hypnos is frequently perturbed

Perturbation (astronomy)

Perturbation is a term used in astronomy in connection with descriptions of the complex motion of a massive body which is subject to appreciable gravitational effects from more than one other massive body....

 by Jupiter

Jupiter

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet within the Solar System. It is a gas giant with mass one-thousandth that of the Sun but is two and a half times the mass of all the other planets in our Solar System combined. Jupiter is classified as a gas giant along with Saturn,...

.

In 1958, Hypnos passed less than 0.03 AU from both Earth and Mars. Neither planet has been approached so closely by Hypnos since the 862 pass of Earth, or will be until the 2214 pass of Earth.

It has a well determined orbit and has been observed 170 times since 1986.

External links

• Orbital simulation from JPL (Java) / Ephemeris