Discovered by Jean Chacornac Minor planet category Main belt Perihelion 358.808 Gm (2.398 AU) Discovered 12 September 1860 Orbits Sun Named after Elpis | Discovery date September 12, 1860 Aphelion 453.624 Gm (3.032 AU) Semi-major axis 406.216 Gm (2.715 AU) Discoverer Jean Chacornac Spectral type C-type asteroid Discovery site Paris Observatory | |
Similar Jean Chacornac discoveries, Other celestial objects | ||
59 Elpis (/ˈɛlpᵻs/ EL-pis) is a very large main belt asteroid. It is a C-type asteroid, meaning that it is very dark and carbonaceous in composition.
Elpis was discovered by Jean Chacornac from Paris, on September 12, 1860. It was Chacornac's sixth and final asteroid discovery.
A controversy arose over the naming of Elpis. Urbain Le Verrier, director of the Paris Observatory, at first refused to allow Chacornac to name the object, because Leverrier was promoting a plan to reorganize asteroid nomenclature by naming them after their discoverers, rather than mythological figures. A protest arose among astronomers. At the Vienna Observatory, Edmund Weiss, who had been studying the asteroid, asked the observatory's director, Karl L. Littrow, to name it. Littrow chose Elpis, a Greek personification of hope, in reference to the favorable political conditions in Europe at the time. In 1862, Leverrier permitted Chacornac to choose a name, and he selected "Olympia" at the suggestion of John Russell Hind. However, Elpis is the name that stuck.
Elpis has been studied by radar.