887 Alinda is an 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...

 orbiting the Sun

Sun

The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is almost perfectly spherical and consists of hot plasma interwoven with magnetic fields...

. It was originally discovered by German astronomer Max Wolf

Max Wolf

Maximilian Franz Joseph Cornelius Wolf was a German astronomer and a pioneer in the field of astrophotography...

 in 1918. It lies within the main asteroid belt and is the namesake for the Alinda family

Alinda family

The Alinda asteroids are a group of asteroids with a semi-major axis of about 2.5 AU and an orbital eccentricity approximately between 0.4 and 0.65. The namesake is 887 Alinda, discovered by Max Wolf in 1918....

 group of asteroids, although it is also classified as an Amor III asteroid. It has a 1:3 orbital resonance

Orbital resonance

In celestial mechanics, an orbital resonance occurs when two orbiting bodies exert a regular, periodic gravitational influence on each other, usually due to their orbital periods being related by a ratio of two small integers. Orbital resonances greatly enhance the mutual gravitational influence of...

 with 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,...

.

Alinda makes close approaches to Earth, including a pass in January 2025, where it comes within 12.3 Gm (12.3 million kilometers) of Earth.

External links

• Discovery Circumstances: Numbered Minor Planets