442 Eichsfeldia [SEP] discoverer or inventor
442 Eichsfeldia
Eichsfeldia (minor planet designation: 442 Eichsfeldia) is a large main belt asteroid that was discovered by German astronomers Max Wolf and A. Schwassmann on 15 February 1899 in Heidelberg. It is classified as a C-type asteroid and is probably composed of primitive carbonaceous material.
Although Eichsfeldia has an orbit similar to the Vesta family asteroids, it was found to be an unrelated interloper on the basis of its non-matching spectral type.
External links.
- Lightcurve plot of (442) Eichsfeldia,
search of a recent proper-element database (AstDys) for 96944 minor planets in 2005 yielded 6051 objects (about 6% of the total) lying within the Vesta-family region as per the first table above.
Interlopers.
Spectroscopic analyses have shown that some of the largest Vestians are in fact interlopers. They are not of the V or J spectral class, but have similar orbital elements by coincidence. These include 306 Unitas, 442 Eichsfeldia, 1697 Koskenniemi, 1781 Van Biesbroeck, 2024 McLaughlin, 2029 Binomi