Key facts
- Discovered by
- C. Kowal
- Discovery site
- Palomar Observatory
- Discovery date
- 27 December 1975
- Pronunciation
- / ˈ t æ n t ə l ə s /
- Named after
- Tantalus
- Alternative designations
- 1975 YA
- Minor planet category
- PHA
- Observation arc
- 38.63 yr (14111 days)
- Aphelion
- 1.675969247626000 AU (250.72143080353 Gm )
- Perihelion
- 0.9041343191800040 AU (135.25656897612 Gm)
- Semi major axis
- 1.290051783403 AU (192.9889998898 Gm)
- Eccentricity
- .299148816495564
- Orbital period sidereal
- 1.47 yr (535.19 d )
- Mean anomaly
- 85.78643003020903 °
- Mean motion
- 0° 40 21.563 / day
- Inclination
- 64.00535930263230°
- Longitude of ascending node
- 94.36993941983230°
- Argument of perihelion
- 61.55509931046220°
via Wikipedia infobox
~1 min read
Encyclopedic overview
2102 Tantalus (1975 YA) is an Apollo asteroid discovered on 27 December 1975, by C. Kowal at Palomar Observatory. It is a Q-type asteroid.
2102 Tantalus is a potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA) because its minimum orbit intersection distance (MOID) is less than 0.05 AU and its diameter is greater than 150 meters. The Earth-MOID is 0.0439 AU (6,570,000 km; 4,080,000 mi). Its orbit is well-determined for the next several hundred years.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “2102 Tantalus” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.