Discovered by C. H. F. Peters, 1879 Minor planet category Main belt Aphelion 3.1020 AU (464.05 Gm) Orbital period 1,654 days Orbits Sun Discovery site Litchfield Observatory | Discovery date 27 July 1879 Observation arc 136.47 yr (49845 d) Perihelion 2.3728 AU (354.97 Gm) Discovered 27 July 1879 | |
Christian Heinrich Friedrich Peters discoveries 188 Menippe, 165 Loreley, 196 Philomela | ||
200 Dynamene is a large dark main-belt asteroid that was discovered by German-American astronomer Christian Heinrich Friedrich Peters on July 27, 1879, in Clinton, New York. The name derives from Dynamene, one of the fifty Nereids in Greek mythology. Based upon its spectrum, 200 Dynamene is classified as a C-type asteroid, indicating that it probably has a primitive composition similar to the carbonaceous chondrite meteorites.
Photometric observations of this asteroid at the Organ Mesa Observatory in Las Cruces, New Mexico in 2011 gave a light curve with a period of 37.394 ± 0.002 hours and a brightness variation of 0.10 ± 0.01 in magnitude. The curve is asymmetrical with four uneven minima and maxima.
Occultation data from October 9, 2006 using 15 chords shows the asteroid is about 130 km in diameter.