80 Sappho

Sappho (minor planet designation: 80 Sappho) is a large, S-type (stony) main-belt asteroid. It was discovered by English astronomer Norman Pogson on May 2, 1864, and is named after Sappho, the Archaic Greece poet. The asteroid is orbiting the Sun at a distance of $68.563 km$ with a period of 3.48 years and an eccentricity (ovalness) of 0.2. The orbital plane is inclined at an angle of 8.68° to the plane of the ecliptic.

13-cm radar observations of this asteroid from the Arecibo Observatory between 1980 and 1985 were used to produce a diameter estimate of 83 km. Hanuš et al. (2013) confirmed the polar axis has ecliptic coordinates (λ, β) = (194°, −26°) and listed a rotation period of 14.03087 h.

Sappho (at apparent magnitude 11.8) occulted the magnitude 7.2 star HIP 24403 in the constellation of Taurus on 16 September 2018 at 8:54 UT. Sacramento and Salt Lake City were the two major cities located underneath the shadow path. Data from this event will help improve the shape model of the asteroid. During the occultation the asteroid was roughly 1.6 AU from Earth with an uncertainty of ±76 km.