Asteroid
A very dark, extremely porous asteroid photographed by the NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft in 1997, pocked by craters nearly as wide as itself.
| Type | Asteroid |
|---|---|
| Distance from the Sun | 2.65 AU |
| Diameter | 53 km |
| Mass | 1.03 × 10^17 kg |
| Temperature | -99°C |
| Orbital period | 1,572 days |
| Apparent magnitude | 11.8 |
| Redshift | 0 |
| Discovered | 1885 |
At 53 km across, 253 Mathilde is 0.4 percent of the diameter of Earth.
Its mass is less than a thousandth of the mass of Earth.
It keeps an average distance of 2.646 AU from the Sun, so sunlight takes 22 minutes to reach it.
A single orbit takes 4.3 years.
An average temperature of 174 K works out at -99 degrees Celsius, colder than the 15 degrees Earth averages.
It has been on record since 1885.
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