10001 Palermo
10001 Palermo, provisional designation, is a Vestian asteroid and a slow rotator from the inner regions of the asteroid belt, approximately in diameter. It was discovered on 8 October 1969, by Soviet–Russian astronomer Lyudmila Chernykh using a 0.4-meter double astrograph at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory in Nauchnij on the Crimean peninsula. The asteroid is likely elongated in shape and has a long rotation period of 213 hours. It was named for the Italian city of Palermo to commemorate the discovery of two hundred years earlier.
Orbit and classification
Palermo is a member of the Vesta family. Vestian asteroids have a composition akin to cumulate eucrites. They are thought to have originated deep within 4 Vesta's crust – the family's parent body – possibly from the large Rheasilvia crater on its southern hemisphere near the South pole, formed as a result of a subcatastrophic collision. Vesta is also the asteroid belt's second-largest and second-most-massive body after Ceres.It orbits the Sun in the inner asteroid belt at a distance of 2.1–2.7 AU once every 3 years and 8 months. Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.13 and an inclination of 7° with respect to the ecliptic. The body's observation arc begins with a precovery taken at the Palomar Observatory in July 1954, more than 12 years prior to its official discovery observation at Nauchnij.
Physical characteristics
Palermo is an assumed S-type, while the overall spectral type for members of the Vesta family is that of a V-type.Slow rotator
In September 2013, a rotational lightcurve of Palermo was obtained from photometric observations in the R-band by astronomers at the Palomar Transient Factory in California. Lightcurve analysis gave an exceptionally long rotation period of 213.368 hours with a high brightness amplitude of 0.97 magnitude, indicative for an elongated shape.Palermo is a slow rotator as most asteroids have periods shorter than 20 hours. There are more than 600 known slow rotators with a spin rate of more than 100 hours.