← Back to dex - Primitive outer-belt type +12
- Darker than charcoal +10
- Has a proper name +8
- Near-Earth object +5
- Amor: shadows Earth's orbit from outside +4
Total score 39
11 more points to reach Epic.
Badges
- 🌠 Near-Earth object · +5
- 🏷️ Has a proper name · +8
- 💘 Amor: shadows Earth's orbit from outside · +4
- 🕶️ Darker than charcoal · +10
- 🦖 Primitive outer-belt type · +12
✨ Trivia
What it actually is
- 🛸 Its orbit family. An Amor-class object. It approaches Earth's orbit from outside without ever crossing it — named for the asteroid Amor, which swept past at 16 million km in 1932.
- 🌞 Closest approach. At its nearest it comes within 1.25 AU of the Sun — inside the orbit of Mars.
- 🔁 One lap. A single orbit around the Sun takes it about 8.8 years.
- 🥏 How far it roams. Its orbit swings between 1.25 and 7.29 AU from the Sun.
Sense of scale
- 🧱 Sense of scale. In everyday terms it is roughly 2.1× the height of Mount Everest.
- 🚶 Walk around it. Walking its equator at a steady pace, eight hours a day, would take about 1.5 days.
By the numbers
- 📐 Size. Roughly 19 km across.
What's in a name
- 🏷️ Named. Notable enough to have earned a proper name, not just a catalogue number.
Properties
- albedo
- 0.03
- aphelion au
- 7.29
- designation
- 3552
- diameter km
- 19
- eccentricity
- 0.7074
- full name
- 3552 Don Quixote (1983 SA)
- h mag
- 13.02
- inclination
- 31.05
- mean motion deg day
- 0.1117
- moid au
- 0.342
- name
- Don Quixote
- named
- yes
- orbit class
- AMO
- perihelion au
- 1.25
- rotation period h
- 6.665
- semi major au
- 4.271
- spec taxonomy
- D
- spect
- D
About Don Quixote
Don Quixote is a rare neo. It has spectral type D and swings within 1.25 AU of the Sun at perihelion.
An Amor-class object. It approaches Earth's orbit from outside without ever crossing it — named for the asteroid Amor, which swept past at 16 million km in 1932.
How to see it
Like any astronomical target, Don Quixote is best seen from a dark site away from city lights, and when it is above the horizon depends on your latitude and the time of year. Because it moves against the background stars, the live position panel on this page tracks where it is right now. The visibility panel above works out tonight's viewing window for your saved location.
Why Don Quixote is a rare neo
Don Quixote scores 39 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 11 points would lift it into a rarer tier.
That score comes from 5 science badges — Near-Earth object, Has a proper name, Amor: shadows Earth's orbit from outside, Darker than charcoal and Primitive outer-belt type — each earned for a real, measurable property of the object. Rarity on Spacedle is never random: the more remarkable an object's astrophysics, the more badges it collects, the higher it scores, and the rarer it ranks.