My Minor Planet: (3202) Graff

This is the orbit of the minor planet named in my honour:

Image of (3202) Graff

The explanatory text on the diagram is probably not readable in the .GIF image above. If you have a PS-viewer, read the text in this PostScript version.

The orbits of the inner planets are shown in light blue (we are observing the inner solar system as seen from the north pole of the earth's orbit) and the locations of the planets Mercury (brown), Venus (purple), Earth (deep blue), Mars (red) and Jupiter (green) on 2000 June 29 are shown by the large dots. The orbit of (3202) is shown in black. The orbit is inclined with respect to the orbit of the earth and the region of the orbit below the plane of the earth's orbit (the ecliptic plane) is shaded. The location of (3202) on 2000 June 29 is shown by the small green dot on the orbit at about the 4:30 position.

(3202) Graff is a Hilda object discovered in 1908 by Max Wolf at Heidelberg. Hilda minor planets are objects at the 3:2 mean-motion resonance with Jupiter. This means that their orbital periods are 2/3 that of Jupiter (i.e., they complete 3 orbital revolutions for every 2 orbital revolutions of Jupiter). More to come...


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