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| Discovery | |
|---|---|
| Discovered by | J. Ferguson |
| Discovery date | September 1, 1854 |
| Designations | |
| A907 GP; A918 GB | |
| Main belt | |
| Orbital characteristics | |
| Epoch December 31, 2006 (JD 2454100.5) | |
| Aphelion | 577.571 Gm (3.861 AU) |
| Perihelion | 364.755 Gm (2.438 AU) |
| 471.163 Gm (3.150 AU) | |
| Eccentricity | 0.226 |
| 2041.585 d (5.59 a) | |
Average orbital speed | 16.57 km/s |
| 14.500° | |
| Inclination | 26.316° |
| 31.238° | |
| 61.996° | |
| Physical characteristics | |
| Dimensions | 255.9 km |
| Mass | ~1.69×1019kg |
Mean density | ~1.9 g/cm³ |
| ~0.0679 m/s² | |
| ~0.1319 km/s | |
| 0.2305 d (5.531 h) | |
| Albedo | 0.0543 |
| Temperature | ~159 K |
Spectral type | C |
| 6.74 | |
31 Euphrosyne is one of the biggest main belt asteroids, found by James Ferguson on September 1, 1854. It was the first asteroid found from North America. It is named after Euphrosyne, one of the Charites in Greek mythology.
It is the eighth biggest main belt asteroid and contains around 1% of the mass of the entire asteroid belt, but is a very dark body near the belt's farther edge. Because of that, Euphrosyne is never visible with binoculars, having a maximum magnitude at the best possible opposition of around +10.2, which is actually fainter than any of the thirty asteroids previously found.
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