3494 Purple Mountain is a small main belt asteroid. It is not purple; its unusual name comes from the Purple Mountain Observatory in China, where it was rediscovered in 1980. (It had been seen but lost several times since 1962. See lost asteroids.)
Purple Mountain is a vestoid, a fragment blasted off the giant asteroid 4 Vesta by the impact that formed the Vestian collisional family. A spectroscopic analysis showed it to have a composition very similar to the cumulate eucrite meteorites.
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Famous quotes containing the words purple and/or mountain:
“Night is a curious child, wandering
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In windows and doors, daubing
The entire neighborhood
With purple paint.”
—Frank Marshall Davis (b. 1905)
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)