23 Thalia is a large main-belt asteroid

Asteroid

Asteroids are a class of small Solar System bodies in orbit around the Sun. They have also been called planetoids, especially the larger ones...

. It was discovered by J. R. Hind

John Russell Hind

John Russell Hind FRS was an English astronomer.- Life and work :John Russell Hind was born in 1823 in Nottingham, the son of lace manufacturer John Hind, and was educated at Nottingham High School...

 on December 15, 1852, at the private observatory of W. Bishop, located in Hyde Park, London, England. Bishop named it after Thalia, the Muse

Muse

The Muses in Greek mythology, poetry, and literature, are the goddesses who inspire the creation of literature and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge, related orally for centuries in the ancient culture, that was contained in poetic lyrics and myths...

 of comedy

Comedy

Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...

 and pastoral

Pastoral

The adjective pastoral refers to the lifestyle of pastoralists, such as shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasturage. It also refers to a genre in literature, art or music that depicts such shepherd life in an...

 poetry

Poetry

Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...

 in Greek mythology

Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...

.

It is categorized as an S-type asteroid

S-type asteroid

S-type asteroids are of a stony composition, hence the name. Approximately 17% of asteroids are of this type, making it the second most common after the C-type.-Characteristics:...

 consisting of mainly of iron- and magnesium-silicates. This the second most common type of asteroid in the main belt. Based on analysis of the light curve, the object has a sidereal rotation period of . An ellipsoidal model of the light curve gives an a/b ratio of .

With a semimajor axis of 2.628, the asteroid is orbiting between the 3:1 and 5:2 Kirkwood gap

Kirkwood gap

A Kirkwood gap is a gap or dip in the distribution of main-belt asteroids with semi-major axis , as seen in the histogram below...

s in the main belt. Its orbital eccentricity is larger than the median value of 0.07 for the main belt, and the inclination is larger than the median of below 4°. But most of the main-belt asteroids have an eccentricity of no more than 0.4 and an inclination of up to 30°, so the orbit of 23 Thalia is not unusual for a main-belt asteroid.

External links

• Orbital simulation from JPL (Java) / Ephemeris