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146 Lucina

146 Lucina is a main-belt asteroid that was discovered by Alphonse Borrelly on June 8, 1875. It was named after Lucina, the Roman goddess of childbirth. This asteroid is large, dark and has a carbonaceous composition. The spectra of the asteroid displays evidence of aqueous alteration.

This body is orbiting the Sun at a distance of with a low eccentricity of 0.07 and an orbital period of 4.48 years. The orbital plane is inclined at an angle of 13.1° to the plane of the ecliptic. Photometric observations of this asteroid made during 1979 and 1981 gave a light curve with a period of 18.54 hours.

Two stellar occultations by Lucina have been observed so far, in 1982 and 1989. During the first event, a possible small satellite with an estimated 5.7 km diameter was detected at a distance of 1,600 km from 146 Lucina. A 1992 search using a CCD failed to discover a satellite larger than 0.6 km, although it may have been obscured by occultation mask. Further evidence for a satellite emerged in 2003, this time based on astrometric measurements.

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