Q136933
Also known as (120) Lachesis, Lachesis
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.
© Marek Nikodem (PPSAE) · via NASA APOD
Key facts
- Discovered by
- Alphonse Borrelly
- Discovery date
- 10 April 1872
- Pronunciation
- / ˈ l æ k ɪ s ɪ s / LAK -iss-iss
- Named after
- Lachesis
- Alternative designations
- A872 GB; 1910 CF;, 1918 UB
- Minor planet category
- Main belt
~1 min read
Article
120 Lachesis is a large main-belt asteroid. It was discovered by French astronomer Alphonse Borrelly on April 10, 1872, and independently by German-American astronomer Christian Heinrich Friedrich Peters on April 11, 1872, then named after Lachesis, one of the Moirai, or Fates, in Greek mythology. A Lachesean occultation of a star occurred in 1999 and was confirmed visually by five observers and once photoelectrically, with the chords yielding an estimated elliptical cross-section of 184 × 144 km.
This body is orbiting the Sun with a period of 5.50 years and an eccentricity (ovalness) of 0.05. The orbital plane is inclined by 7° to the plane of the ecliptic. Photometric observations of this asteroid were made in early 2009 at the Organ Mesa Observatory in Las Cruces, New Mexico. The resulting light curve shows a synodic rotation period of 46.551 ± 0.002 hours with a brightness variation of 0.14 ± 0.02 in magnitude. It is a very slow rotator with the longest rotation period of an asteroid more than 150 km in diameter. As a primitive C-type asteroid it is probably composed of carbonaceous material.