File:720Bohlinia_(Lightcurve_Inversion).png · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons
Picture of the Day · NASA
Pathfinder on Mars
2026-07-04
On July 4th, 1997, using its own array of fireworks, a parachute, and a cocoon of airbags, the Mars Pathfinder spacecraft bounced like a giant beach ball at least 15 times before it came to rest on the surface of Mars at 10:07 AM Pacific Daylight Time. After its then novel airbag-assisted landing sequence was completed, Pathfinder transmitted this color mosaic to mission operators on Earth. In the scene from another world, the Mars Sojourner robot rover is visible in the foreground, crouched on top of the unfolded Pathfinder. About the size of a large house cat, the six-wheeled, solar-powered Sojourner became the first successful Martian rover. Surrounding Pathfinder are deflated airbags and the rock-strewn terrain of the Ares Vallis floodplain. In the distance Martian hills appear against a dusty brownish sky. The Pathfinder lander was subsequently renamed the Carl Sagan Memorial Station.
via NASA APOD
Key facts
- Discovered by
- Franz Kaiser
- Discovery site
- Heidelberg
- Discovery date
- 18 October 1911
- Alternative designations
- 1911 MW
- Observation arc
- 117.11 yr (42775 d)
- Aphelion
- 2.9376 AU (439.46 Gm )
- Perihelion
- 2.8371 AU (424.42 Gm)
- Semi major axis
- 2.8873 AU (431.93 Gm)
- Orbital period sidereal
- 4.91 yr (1792.0 d )
- Mean anomaly
- 350.275 °
- Mean motion
- 0° 12 3.204 / day
- Inclination
- 2.3562°
- Longitude of ascending node
- 35.706°
- Argument of perihelion
- 118.762°
- Mean radius
- 16.865 ± 0.7 km , 17.32 ± 0.905 km
- Mass
- (5.97 ± 0.80) × 10 kg
- Mean density
- 2.74 ± 0.56 g/cm
- Synodic rotation period
- 8.919 h (0.3716 d )
via Wikipedia infobox
~2 min read
Encyclopedic overview
720 Bohlinia is a minor planet, and binary asteroid, orbiting the Sun that was discovered by Franz Kaiser, a German astronomer in 1911. It is named for Swedish astronomer Karl Petrus Theodor Bohlin, to mark his 65th birthday. He had worked on the orbits of asteroids.
It is one of the Koronis family of asteroids. A group of astronomers, including Lucy d'Escoffier Crespo da Silva and Richard P. Binzel, used observations made between 1998 through 2000 to determine the spin-vector alignment of these asteroids. The collaborative work resulted in the creation of 61 new individual rotation lightcurves to augment previous published observations.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “720 Bohlinia” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.