Discovery
Eugenia was discovered on June 28, 1857 by the Franco-German amateur astronomer Hermann Goldschmidt. His instrument of discovery was a 4-inch aperture telescope located in his sixth floor apartment in the Latin Quarter of Paris. It was the forty-fifth minor planet to be discovered. The preliminary orbital elements were computed by Wilhelm Forster in Berlin, based on three observations in July, 1857.
The asteroid was named by its discoverer after Empress Eugenia di Montijo, the wife of Napoleon III. It was the first asteroid to be definitely named after a real person, rather than a figure from classical legend, although there was some controversy about whether 12 Victoria was really named for the mythological figure or for Queen Victoria.
Read more about this topic: 45 Eugenia
Famous quotes containing the word discovery:
“That the discovery of this great truth, which lies so near and obvious to the mind, should be attained to by the reason of so very few, is a sad instance of the stupidity and inattention of men, who, though they are surrounded with such clear manifestations of the Deity, are yet so little affected by them, that they seem as it were blinded with excess of light.”
—George Berkeley (1685–1753)
“We are all humiliated by the sudden discovery of a fact which has existed very comfortably and perhaps been staring at us in private while we have been making up our world entirely without it.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“However backwards the world has been in former ages in the discovery of such points as GOD never meant us to know,—we have been more successful in our own days:Mthousands can trace out now the impressions of this divine intercourse in themselves, from the first moment they received it, and with such distinct intelligence of its progress and workings, as to require no evidence of its truth.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)