Hygiea, discovery

H Y G I E A

Hygiea or 10 is a little asteroid situated between Mars & Jupiter orbit. Its excentricity is 0.1194 a clasic number to asteroid kinds, by the way, at perihelion Hygiea is situated at 2.76 A.U. & aphelion at 3.51 A.U. Medium distance is 3.138 AU. The orbital period of Hygiea is 5.56 years & its inclination with the ecliptic plane is 3.84º.

During the night that I located & discovered it was situated at Scorpius constellation closed to b Scorpii. Hygiea was discovered by Mr. Gaspari at April 12^sd of 1849 at Naples. It has a diameter of 429 km. ± 8 km. Rotation period is 18.40 hours.

During the opposition of 2000, Hygiea is located at Scorpius constellation. Coincidentally, April 20^th, 2000 Hygiea was 30' arc north of a Scorpii or Antares. Due to very excentricity orbit that it has, Hygiea's asteroid conditions to see it changes each year from Earth. Accidentally Hygiea at May 25^th, 2000 , it was 262 millions km from Earth, its closest during the years 1900-2075.

With the informatic program, Guide v. 7.0 & with my telescope Vixen of focal distance of 1400mm. & 90mm diameter I located at asteroid at rich field but a down one ecliptic zone. First observation was made at May 29^th at 21h.35m.UT; where without problems I saw Hygiea with 10.2 magnitude. Next day, May 30th I saw the apparent moviment of Hygiea at the field of stars, with aproximality 10' arc.

By the way, the discovery & localitation date of Hygiea is May 29^th, 2000.

By the other hand, with a Java program that I found on the net, & thanks to Osamu Ajiki of AstroArts&y Ron Baalke of JPL, you can see the asteroid orbit, distans in relationship to Sun 6 Earth at Solar System for any date.