1378 Leonce, provisional designation 1936 DB, is a dark Nysian asteroid from the inner regions of the asteroid belt, approximately 19 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered on 21 February 1936, by Belgian astronomer Fernand Rigaux at the Royal Observatory of Belgium in Uccle, who named it after his father, Leonce Rigaux.[2][15]
Orbit and classification
Leonce is a member of the Nysa family (405),[4] also known as the Nysa-Polana complex, the largest grouping of almost 20 thousand known asteroids in the main belt, consisting of several sub-asteroid families.[16]: 23
It orbits the Sun in the inner asteroid belt at a distance of 2.0–2.7 AU once every 3 years and 8 months (1,336 days). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.15 and an inclination of 4° with respect to the ecliptic.[1]
In 2002, 2007 and 2017, three rotational light curves of Leonce were obtained from photometric observations by amateur astronomers René Roy, Laurent Bernasconi and Daniel Klinglesmith and colleagues at Etscorn Observatory (719), respectively. Analysis gave a well-defined light curve with a consolidated rotation period of 4.3250 hours and a brightness amplitude between 0.49 and 0.63 magnitude (U=3/3/3).[3][11][12]
In addition a modeled light curve, using photometric data from various sources, gave a period of 4.32527 hours, as well as two spin axes of (210.0°, −67.0°) and (46.0°, −77.0°) in ecliptic coordinates.[13]
^ abKlinglesmith, Daniel A. III; Hanowell, Jesse; Risley, Ethan; Turk, Janek; Vargas, Angelica; Warren, Curtis Alan (October 2013). "Inversion Model Candidates". The Minor Planet Bulletin. 40 (4): 190–193. Bibcode:2013MPBu...40..190K. ISSN1052-8091. Retrieved 31 October 2017.