49 Pales
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49 Pales (Template:IPAc-en) is a large, dark main-belt asteroid. It was discovered by German-French astronomer Hermann Goldschmidt on 19 September 1857 from his balcony in Paris.<ref name="MPC">Template:Cite web</ref> The asteroid is named after Pales, the goddess of shepherds in Roman mythology. Since it was discovered on the same night as 48 Doris, geologist Élie de Beaumont suggested naming the two "The Twins".<ref name=Schmadel2003/>
The orbit of this asteroid has close to a 2:1 commensurability with the orbit of Jupiter.<ref name=Fernández1987/> On 17 January 2000, this minor planet was observed occulting a 9th magnitude star from seven locations. These timed chords across the silhouette allowed an estimate to be made of the object's dimensions,<ref name=Mizon2000/> yielding a cross-section of Template:Val.<ref name=Dunham2002/>
Pales has been studied by radar.<ref name="detected"/> It has a rotation period of Template:Val and a lightcurve with an amplitude of 0.18 mag. The lightcurve shows 4 maxima and 4 minima per cycle, suggesting an irregular shape.<ref name="Pilcher2017"/> The previously accepted period of 10.42 hours with 2 maxima and minima per cycle<ref name="Schober1979"/> was proven to be wrong by Pilcher in 2016, showing that correct rotation periods still have not been found for all low-numbered asteroids.<ref name="Pilcher2016"/>
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