De Gasparis discovers asteroid Massalia at Capodimonte
- When
- 1852
- Where
- Astronomical Observatory of Capodimonte
- Episodes
- 1
Annibale de Gasparis discovered asteroid 20 Massalia on 19 September 1852 from the Astronomical Observatory of Capodimonte in Naples. The object was named after Marseille, where Jean Chacornac independently sighted it the following night. Massalia was the first asteroid assigned a non-mythological name and the first not given an iconic symbol, reflecting evolving astronomical conventions.
Episodes
Background and detail
Discovery. De Gasparis discovered asteroid 20 Massalia on 19 September 1852 at the Naples Observatory. The object is a stony asteroid in the inner asteroid belt, approximately 145 kilometers in diameter, serving as the parent body of the Massalia family. Jean Chacornac independently sighted the asteroid the following night at Marseilles Observatory.
Naming. Massalia was named for the Latin name of the French city of Marseille. It was the first asteroid in the Solar System to receive a non-mythological name. Consequently, it was the first asteroid not assigned an iconic symbol by its discoverer, as the circled number 20 was explicitly proposed as its symbol instead.
People involved
- Annibale de Gasparis · Discoverer
- Jean Chacornac · Independent Discoverer
Sources
- 20 Massalia Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-04
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.