Science Board: An Asteroid Named Doris

Doris is a very large asteroid orbiting between Mars and Jupiter in the main portion of the asteroid belt. NASA JPL has not classified Doris as potentially hazardous because its orbit does not bring it close to Earth.

Doris is about 216.5 kilometers in diameter, making it larger than 99% of asteroids, comparable in size to the U.S. state of Maryland.

To find a name for the object, Jacques Babinet of the Academy of Sciences created a shortlist and asked the geologist Élie de Beaumont to make the selection. De Beaumont chose Doris, after an Oceanid in Greek mythology.

I was able to image Doris on two consective nights last week and putting the two images together in Photoshop can show how this rock moves in relation to the (relatively) stable stars.