8 Flora

Flora was discovered by J. R. Hind on 18 October 1847. It was his second asteroid discovery after 7 Iris.{{citation needed|date=October 2020}}

The name Flora was proposed by John Herschel, from Flora, the Latin goddess of flowers and gardens, wife of Zephyrus (the personification of the West wind), and mother of Spring. The Greek equivalent is Chloris, who has her own asteroid, 410 Chloris, but in Greek 8 Flora is also called 8 Chloris (8 Χλωρίς).{{citation needed|date=October 2020}}

The old iconic symbol for 8 Flora has been variously rendered as 24px, 24px, etc. It is in the pipeline for Unicode 17.0 as U+1CEC2 𜻂 (12px).{{cite web |url=https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2023/23207-historical-asteroids.pdf |title=Unicode request for historical asteroid symbols |last1=Bala |first1=Gavin Jared |last2=Miller |first2=Kirk |date=18 September 2023 |website=unicode.org |publisher=Unicode |access-date=26 September 2023 |quote=}}{{cite web |url=https://unicode.org/alloc/Pipeline.html |title=Proposed New Characters: The Pipeline |author=Unicode |date= |website=unicode.org |publisher=The Unicode Consortium |access-date=6 November 2023 |quote=}}

File:FloraOrbit.pngFile:Moon and Asteroids 1 to 10.svg. Flora is third from the right.]]

Lightcurve analysis indicates that Flora's pole points towards ecliptic coordinates (β, λ) = (16°, 160°) with a 10° uncertainty. This gives an axial tilt of 78°, plus or minus ten degrees.

Flora is the parent body of the Flora family of asteroids, and by far the largest member, comprising about 80% of the total mass of this family. Nevertheless, Flora was almost certainly disrupted by the impact(s) that formed the family, and is probably a gravitational aggregate of most of the pieces.{{Citation needed|date=November 2008}}

Flora's spectrum indicates that its surface composition is a mixture of silicate rock (including pyroxene and olivine) and nickel-iron metal. Flora, and the whole Flora family generally, are good candidates for being the parent bodies of the L chondrite meteorites.{{cite journal| first=D.| last= Nesvorný| title=The Flora Family: A Case of the Dynamically Dispersed Collisional Swarm?| journal=Icarus| volume= 157| issue=1| pages= 155–172| date=2002| doi=10.1006/icar.2002.6830| bibcode=2002Icar..157..155N|display-authors=etal}} This meteorite type comprises 35% of meteorites impacting the Earth.{{cite book|chapter-url=https://www.nhm.ac.uk/our-science/data/metcat/search/metsPerGroup.dsml|title=The Catalogue of Meteorites|date=2022 |publisher=Natural History Museum|doi=10.5519/tqfuwle7 |access-date=28 May 2020 |last1=Grady |first1=Monica |chapter=Meteorites }}

During an observation on 25 March 1917, 8 Flora was mistaken for the 15th-magnitude star TU Leonis, which led to that star's classification as a U Geminorum cataclysmic variable star. Flora had come to opposition on 1917 February 13, 40 days earlier. This mistake was uncovered only in 1995.{{cite journal| bibcode=1996A&A...312..496S|

title=TU Leonis = (8) Flora: the non-existence of a U Geminorum star| last=Schmadel| first=L. D.|author2= Schmeer, P.|author3= Börngen, F.| journal=Astron. Astrophys.| volume= 312| pages= 496|date=August 1996}}{{cite web| url=http://cbat.eps.harvard.edu/iauc/06100/06174.html#Item1| title=IAUC 6174}}

On 26 July 2013, Flora at magnitude 8.8 occulted the star 2UCAC 22807162 over parts of South America, Africa, and Asia.{{Cite web |date= |title=(8) Flora / 2UCAC 22807162 event on 2013 Jul 26, 00:18 UT |url=http://www.asteroidoccultation.com/2013_07/0726_8_29978.htm |archive-url=https://archive.today/20130724210247/http://www.asteroidoccultation.com/2013_07/0726_8_29978.htm |archive-date=24 July 2013 |access-date= |website=asteroidoccultation.com}}

In the 1968 science-fiction film The Green Slime, an orbital perturbation propels the asteroid Flora into a collision course with Earth.

{{notelist}}

{{Reflist|refs=

{{cite web

|quote=2024-11-09 last obs

|title=JPL Small-Body Database Browser: 8 Flora

|url=http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=8

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{{cite web

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{{cite web

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{{cite book |author=Donald H. Menzel |author2=Jay M. Pasachoff |name-list-style=amp |date=1983 |title=A Field Guide to the Stars and Planets |edition=2nd |publisher=Houghton Mifflin |pages=[https://archive.org/details/fieldguidetostar00menz_0/page/391 391] |location=Boston, MA |isbn=0-395-34835-8 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/fieldguidetostar00menz_0/page/391 }}

{{cite web

|title=Horizons Batch for November 2020

|publisher=JPL Horizons

|url=https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons_batch.cgi?batch=1&COMMAND=%27Flora%27&START_TIME=%272020-10-31%27&STOP_TIME=%272020-11-02%27&STEP_SIZE=%271%20day%27&QUANTITIES=%279,19,20,23,29,39%27

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}}

• [http://www.rni.helsinki.fi/~mjk/thirty.pdf shape model deduced from lightcurve]
• [http://adsabs.harvard.edu//full/seri/MNRAS/0008//0000082.000.html "Announcement of discovery of Flora", MNRAS 8 (1848) 82]
• {{AstDys|8}}
• {{JPL small body}}

{{Minor planets navigator |7 Iris |number=8 |9 Metis}}

{{Small Solar System bodies}}

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Category:Flora asteroids

Flora

Flora

Category:S-type asteroids (Tholen)

18471018

Category:Flora (mythology)