28 March: Pallas 2

This date in 1802 saw the discovery of asteroid Pallas 2. Here's what you need to know:

1. The Asteroid Pallas, usually referred to as 2 Pallas, was the second asteroid to be discovered. It was discovered on 28 March 1802 by Heinrich Olbers. The credit could have gone to Charles Messier as early as 1779. He was tracking a comet back then, and tracked the movement of another object at the same time, which he assumed was a star, but we now know it was Pallas.
2. Olbers discovered Pallas when he was looking for Ceres, the first asteroid to be discovered, and saw something else moving nearby. The two asteroids were passing close together at the time.
3. Like many other asteroids discovered about the same time, Pallas was originally classified as a planet.
4. Pallas is one of the largest asteroids in the Solar System, accounting for about 7% of the mass of the asteroid belt. It isn't the largest - Vesta is bigger. Pallas measures 512 kilometers (318 mi) in diameter. It takes 4.6 years to orbit the Sun.
5. We don't know much about the surface of Pallas yet. It is probably made of a silicate material and variations in the pixels of the images that have been taken suggest there are some surface features.
6. Pallas is part of a family. There are more than 10 smaller asteroids with a similar orbit to Pallas. The first inkling that Pallas was part of a group came in 1917 when the Japanese astronomer Kiyotsugu Hirayama observed three of them. They are not, however, moons of Pallas. Pallas doesn't have any satellites.
7. 2 Pallas is named after Pallas Athena, a name used for the goddess Athena. Pallas was killed by Athena, who took on the name Pallas as a tribute.
8. Pallas is the name used for the asteroid in most languages, except for Chinese. The Chinese refer to it as zhìshénxīng, which means "the wisdom-goddess star".
9. The element palladium was discovered just after the asteroid and was named after it.
10. In astrology Pallas is associated with patterns and linking ideas together, and also with the relationships between fathers and daughters. Also falling into her domain are cities, ideas, creativity, survival, claiming personal power, the immune system, the kidneys, the arts, justice, intuition, wisdom, defence and Horses.

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