3200 Phaethon (sometimes incorrectly spelled Phaeton) is an Apollo and Mercury-, Venus- and Mars-crosser asteroid with unusual properties, and may be an extinct comet.
Phaeton is the name of a hypothetical planet posited to once have existed between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter whose destruction supposedly led to the formation of asteroid belt....
Phaet (Alpha Col)
Wezn (Beta Col)
Pam Eastlick has contributed a great description of Argo Navis and its associated constellations as seen from Guam.
Phaethon's most remarkable distinction is that it approaches the Sun closer than any other numbered asteroid. The surface temperature at its closest (perihelion) could reach approximately 1025 Kelvin.
**Phaeton is actually an asteroid and shows no signs of cometary activity, but its orbit matches the meteoroid paths very well.
3200 Phaethon
(inactive comet?)
The meteors not associated with a meteor shower are bits of rock from asteroids. The meteors that ARE associated with a meteor shower are much too fragile to survive their trip through our atmosphere.
3200 Phaethon
Here is a more extensive listing of meteor showers and their characteristics. Are the Leonids Coming?
3200 Phaethon passes closer to the Sun than any other object in the solar system with the exception of a few comets. It was discovered by the IRAS satellite and is thought to be the parent body of the Geminid meteor shower.
One of the most extreme of these is 3200 Phaethon, discovered by the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) in 1983. (It was the first asteroid to be discovered by a spacecraft.) Phaethon approaches to within 0.
In contrast to the examples of Phaethon and Hidalgo is Chiron, which following its discovery in 1977 was classified as an asteroid, (2060) Chiron.
En un mito, Cygnus es amigo del Phaethon, el hijo de Apolo, dios del Sol. Phaethon, el fantasma cayó en el río Eridanus, intentando conducir la carreta de los dioses del Sol.
The constellation represents the youth Cygnus who was a friend to Phaethon, the son of Apollo. Phaethon attempted to drive Apollo's chariot (the Sun) across the sky one day.
Ovid graphically describes Phaethon's crazy ride in Book II of his Metamorphoses. The chariot plunged so low that the Earth caught fire. Enveloped in hot smoke, Phaethon was swept along by the horses, not knowing where he was.
In ancient Greece, the two great luminaries the Sun and the Moon were called Helios and Selene; the farthest planet was called Phainon, the shiner; followed by Phaethon, "bright"; the red planet was known as Pyroeis, the "fiery"; ...
The Greeks gave the planets names: the farthest was called Phainon, the shiner, while below it was Phaethon, the bright one.
However under the constant pleading by Phaethon, Helios eventually relented. So one day Phaethon climbed into the chariot, drawn by two white horses. He grasped the reins and set off across the skies.
But some asteroids, such (3200) Phaethon and (944) Hidalgo, have highly inclined and/or elliptical paths, suggesting they may be defunct cometary nuclei. Rotational periods of asteroids range from 2.
Phaeton was trown into its waters when he drove Sun's chariot too close to Earth. Its brightest star, Achernar ("River's End") is located too far South (d close to -60°) to be seen fom Canada or US.
Tolstoj (Phaethontias) Quadrangle
Solitudo Criophori Quadrangle (No Data)
Pieria Quadrangle (No Data)
Discovery (Solitude Hermae Trismegisti) Quadrangle
Michelangelo (Solitudo Promethei) Quadrangle
Solitudo Persephones Quadrangle ...
This meteor shower occurs each year as the Earth passes through the orbit of the asteroid #3200 Phaeton, and dusty remnants of the asteroids burn up as they enter the Earth's atmosphere.
The Geminids are a bit different. The appear to be travelling in the same orbit as Apollo asteroid 3200 Phaethon. Is this an asteroid that perhaps was once surrounded by and icy snowball of cometary matter?
The main distinction seems to be that comets have more volatiles and more elliptical orbits. But there are interesting ambiguous cases such as 2060 Chiron (aka 95 P/Chiron) and 3200 Phaethon which seem to share some aspects of both categories.
Columba was named by the astronomer Bayer, but was populatized by the French Augustin Royer in 1679 (before that, Colmba's stars have been included in the constellation ). Alpha Col (the brightest star in Columba) is called Phaet; ...
Alpha Col (the brightest star in Columba) is called Phaet; beta Col (the second-brightest star in Columba) is called Wezn. The globular cluster NGC 1851 and the blue magnitude 5 star (mu Col, a "runaway star") are in Columba.
The peculiar Apollo asteroid Phaethon, about 5 km (about 3 mi) wide, approaches the sun more closely, at 20.9 million km (13.9 million mi), than any other known asteroid. It is also associated with the yearly return of the Geminid stream of meteors.
 See also: Sun, Earth, Star, Constellation, Sky
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