28 Bellona is a large asteroid located in the main-belt. It was discovered by German astronomer Robert Luther on 1 March 1854, and named after Bellà Âna, the Roman goddess of war; the name was chosen to mark the beginning of the Crimean War. Its historical symbol was Bellona's whip and spear; it was encoded in Unicode 17.0 as U+1CECE ð» ().
Bellona is a stony (S-type) asteroid with a cross-section size of around 100âÂÂ120 km. 28 Bellona is orbiting the Sun with a period of 4.63 years.
Bellona has been studied by radar. Photometric observations of this asteroid at the Palmer Divide Observatory in Colorado Springs, Colorado in 2007 gave a light curve with a period of 15.707 ñ 0.002 hours and a brightness variation of 0.27 ñ 0.03 in magnitude. This report is in close agreement with a period estimate of 15.695 hours reported in 1983, and rejects a longer period of 16.523 hours reported in 1979.