754 Malabar

Also known as (754) Malabar, Malabar

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: August Kopff
Discovery site: Heidelberg
Discovery date: 22 August 1906
Pronunciation: / m æ l ə ˈ b ɑːr /
Named after: Mount Malabar , West Java
Alternative designations: 1906 UT

Article

754 Malabar is a minor planet orbiting the Sun. It was discovered in 1906 by German astronomer August Kopff from Heidelberg, and was named in honor of a Dutch-German solar eclipse expedition to Christmas Island in 1922. Malabar is the name of a city and mountain in Indonesia. This object is orbiting at a distance of 2.99 AU from the Sun with a period of 5.16 years and an eccentricity (ovalness) of 0.048. Its orbital plane is inclined at an angle of 24.6° to the plane of the ecliptic.

Photometric measurements of this asteroid made in 2003 resulted in a light curve showing a rotation period of 11.740±0.005 h and a brightness variation of 0.45±0.03 in magnitude. This is a Ch-class asteroid in the Bus asteroid taxonomy, showing a broad absorption band in its carbonaceous spectrum near a wavelength of 0.7 μm. This feature is interpreted as due to iron-bearing phyllosilicates on the surface. 754 Malabar spans a girth of 102.8 km. Between 2002 and 2022, 754 Malabar has been observed to occult sixteen stars.