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2980 Cameron, provisionally designated 1981 EU17, is a main-belt asteroid discovered by prolific American astronomer Schelte Bus at Siding Spring Observatory, Australia, on March 2, 1981. It orbits the Sun every 4.11 years at a distance of 2.1–3.0 AU.[1]
| Discovery [1] | |
|---|---|
| Discovered by | S. J. Bus |
| Discovery site | Siding Spring Obs. |
| Discovery date | 2 March 1981 |
| Designations | |
| (2980) Cameron | |
Named after | Alastair Cameron [2] |
| 1981 EU17 · 1977 EL3 1979 SQ7 | |
| main-belt | |
| Orbital characteristics [1] | |
| Epoch 4 September 2017 (JD 2458000.5) | |
| Uncertainty parameter 0 | |
| Observation arc | 39.87 yr (14,564 days) |
| Aphelion | 3.0324 AU |
| Perihelion | 2.1023 AU |
| 2.5673 AU | |
| Eccentricity | 0.1811 |
| 4.11 yr (1,503 days) | |
| 36.213° | |
| 0° 14m 22.56s / day | |
| Inclination | 7.2772° |
| 172.24° | |
| 254.25° | |
| Physical characteristics | |
| Dimensions | 5.121±0.183[3] |
| 0.322±0.047[3] | |
| 13.4[1] | |
The asteroid was named after astrophysicist and cosmogonist Alastair G. W. Cameron (1925–2005), who was associate director for theoretical astrophysics at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He was an early advocate of the concepts of a turbulent accretion disk solar nebula, and of the origin of the Moon by a giant impact on the proto-Earth. He also studied the nucleosynthesis in stars and supernovae, and the cosmic abundances of nuclides.[2]
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