File:Орбіта_астероіда_203.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
- C. H. F. Peters
- Discovery date
- 25 September 1879
- Pronunciation
- / p ɒ m ˈ p iː ə /
- Named after
- Pompeii
- Alternative designations
- A879 SA, 1895 EA
- Minor planet category
- Main belt
- Observation arc
- 136.43 yr (49,832 d)
- Aphelion
- 2.897 AU (433.4 Gm )
- Perihelion
- 2.577 AU (385.5 Gm)
- Semi major axis
- 2.737 AU (409.4 Gm)
- Orbital period sidereal
- 4.53 yr (1,653.6 d)
- Average orbital speed
- 18.01 km/s
- Mean anomaly
- 47.6383 °
- Mean motion
- 0° 13 3.72 / day
- Inclination
- 3.1780°
- Longitude of ascending node
- 347.916°
- Argument of perihelion
- 57.060°
- Mean diameter
- 124.592 ± 1.079 km
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- asteroid
- Named after
- Pompeii
- Followed by
- 204 Kallisto
- Follows
- 202 Chryseïs
- Parent body
- Sun
- Minor-planet group
- asteroid belt
- Diameter
- 124.592
- Orbital period
- 1655.287781479573
Show 19 more facts
- discoverer or inventor
- Christian Heinrich Friedrich Peters
- site of astronomical discovery
- Litchfield Observatory
- provisional designation
- A879 SA
- time of discovery or invention
- 1879-09-25
- orbital inclination
- 3.172082216726184
- albedo
- 0.036
- Commons category
- 203 Pompeja
- rotation period
- 24.052
- asteroid spectral type
- D-type asteroid
- absolute magnitude
- 8.93
- orbital eccentricity
- 0.06109695932080539
- semi-major axis of an orbit
- 2.738525073600855
- periapsis
- 2.571209518580058
- apoapsis
- 2.905840628621652
- longitude of ascending node
- 347.5956984161557
- argument of periapsis
- 59.96154948165962
- mean anomaly
- 64.7654884445028
- time of periapsis
- 2460702.706884212
- epoch
- November 21, 2025
Sources (2)
via Wikidata · CC0
~2 min read
Encyclopedic overview
203 Pompeja is a fairly large main-belt asteroid. It was discovered by C. H. F. Peters on September 25, 1879, in Clinton, New York, and named after Pompeii, the Roman town destroyed in a volcanic eruption in AD 79. This asteroid is orbiting the Sun at a distance of 2.74 AU with an eccentricity (ovalness) of 0.06 and a period of 4.53 yr. The orbital plane is tilted at an angle of 3.2° to the plane of the ecliptic.
Based upon photometric observations taken during 2011, it has a synodic rotation period of 24.052 ± 0.001 h, with a peak-to-peak amplitude of 0.10 ± 0.01 in magnitude. Because the rotation period nearly matches that of the Earth, it required coordinated observations from multiple observatories at widely spaced latitudes to produce a complete light curve. As discovered in 2021, Pompeja alongside the main-belt asteroid 269 Justitia have very red colors due to tholins on its surface, similar to trans-Neptunian objects. These asteroids are therefore thought to have formed in the outer Solar System despite their current orbits within the asteroid belt.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “203 Pompeja” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.