72 Feronia

Also known as (72) Feronia, Feronia

main-belt asteroid

Picture of the Day · NASA

Jupiter and Venus from Earth

2026-06-07

It was visible around the world. The sunset conjunction of Jupiter (left) and Venus (right) in 2012 was visible almost no matter where you lived on Earth. Anyone on our planet with a clear western horizon at sunset could see them. That year, a creative photographer traveled away from the town lights of Szubin, Poland to photograph a near closest approach of the two planets. The bright planets were then separated by only three degrees and his daughter struck a humorous pose. A faint red sunset still glowed in the background. Jupiter and Venus are together again this week after sunset, passing within a degree of each other about two days from today.

Key facts

Discovered by: Christian Heinrich Friedrich Peters
Discovery date: May 29, 1861
Pronunciation: / f ɛ ˈ r oʊ n i ə /
Named after: Feronia
Minor planet category: Main belt
Adjectives: Feronian

~1 min read

Article

72 Feronia is a quite large and dark main belt asteroid. It was the first asteroid discovery by C. H. F. Peters, on May 29, 1861, from Hamilton College, New York State. It was initially thought that Peters had merely seen the previously discovered asteroid 66 Maja, but T.H. Safford showed that it was a new body. Safford named it after Feronia, a Roman fertility goddess.

This asteroid is orbiting the Sun with a period of 3.41 years, having a semi-major axis of 2.266 AU and an eccentricity of 0.121. The orbital plane is inclined by an angle of 5.4° to the plane of the ecliptic. This is a spectral type TDG asteroid with a cross-section size of 84 km. The asteroid has an estimated rotation period of 8.09 h. Hanuš et al. (2013) gives two possible solutions for the pole in ecliptic coordinates: (λ1, β1) = (287°, −39°) or (λ1, β1) = (102°, −55°).