Wednesday 20 January 2016

(571) Dulcinea, meeting in person

(571) Dulcinea is a main belt asteroid discovered in September of 1905. It was spotted without being identified in December of 1904.

The orbit is in the central region of the main belt. It has a perihelion of 1.82 AU and an aphelion of 2.99 AU. The semimajor axis is at 2.41 AU. It has an orbital period of 3 years and 270 days. It has an inclination of 5.2º. It has a diameter of about 11 km.


There were star occultation in August of 2002 and March of 2015.

Orbital resonance:
19:6 with Jupiter (99.8%)
4:15 with Earth-Moon (99.7%)
-
7:6 with Juno (99.9%)
16:13 with Ceres-Pallas (99.9%)
3:2 with Davida (99.7%)



Spanish literature

In the book "Don Quixote of La Mancha" of Miguel de Cervantes, Dulcinea del Toboso was the lady to whom Don Quixote aspired platonically.


(571) Dulcinea is related with meeting in person through an interview or a date/appointment, like in the movies "The Life of David Gale" (2002), "The Sum of All Fears" (2002) and "Dark Places" (2015).