1196 Sheba

ASTEROIDMain-belt asteroid

ILLUSTRATION FROM SMASS TYPE X · ALBEDO 0.218 · RADIUS 12.6 KM

[

OVERVIEW

] ASTEROID

1196 Sheba is a main-belt asteroid. Its absolute magnitude () is 10.20. It orbits the Sun at a mean distance of 2.652 . Its effective radius is 12.64 . It is catalogued as 1196 Sheba (1931 KE). It was discovered in 1931.

WHAT IT IS
Main-belt asteroid
HOW FAR
2.652

Its average distance from the Sun, not from Earth.

HOW BIG
12.64

The radius of a ball that would look the same size — the body itself is not round.

HOW BRIGHT IN ITSELF (H)

How bright it would look from a fixed, standard distance — a measure of the object rather than of the view from here.

ONE ORBIT TAKES
4.33

One trip round the Sun.

[

OBSERVING

] FROM WHERE YOU ARE

What it takes to see 1196 Sheba for yourself. Everything in this part of the page is worked out for a real horizon, a real night and the equipment you say you have.

[

CATALOG DATA

] 17 FIELDS

The raw catalogue values, as the source published them, with the error bars where one was published — sorted by what each set of figures is about rather than by the order they happened to be stored in.

WHAT KIND OF THING IT IS

What the object is in itself, rather than how it happens to look from here.

Spectral type (SMASS II)
X
Rotation period
6.319

HOW BRIGHT IT IS

What the light adds up to, measured through one filter at a time. A magnitude is a brightness on a backwards scale — the smaller the number, the brighter the object.

Albedo

THE ORBIT

The shape of the path, where the object sits on it, and the instant those figures were true of. An orbit is a fit to observations and drifts away from the real one either side of its epoch.

Orbital period
4.326
Eccentricity
Inclination
17.68
Longitude of ascending node
100.7
Argument of perihelion
262.32
Mean anomaly
253.97
Element epoch
2461200.5000
Perihelion passage
2461665.1700
Minimum distance from Earth's orbit
1.25
Orbit class
MBA

WHEN IT WAS FOUND

Who first saw it, from where, and by what method.

Discovered by
Jackson, C.
Discovered from
Johannesburg
Discovered on
1931-05-21
First observed
1912-01-19
[

ALSO KNOWN AS

] 3 DESIGNATIONS
  • Asteroid 1196
  • Asteroid 1196 Sheba (1931 KE)
  • Common name Sheba
[

LOOK IT UP ELSEWHERE

] 1 SERVICE

Each link carries the identifier printed beside it. Nothing on this page is a measurement of our own, so a number that disagrees with one of these is worth reporting — and a service that has never catalogued this object under this name will say so plainly.

  • JPL Small-Body Database1196

    The orbit these elements were taken from, with its uncertainty, its close approaches and every observation behind the fit.

[

CITE THIS PAGE

] DR1

This page is live and its numbers move when an upstream refreshes, so the citation names the release the rows belong to rather than the day you read them. The release itself is frozen, republished as a bundle, and is what a data-availability statement should point at.

PLAIN TEXT
SpaceCatalog. 1196 Sheba [catalogue entry]. Data release DR1 (2026-08-21). https://spacecatalog.org/object/1196-sheba
BIBTEX
@misc{spacecatalog_1196-sheba,
  author       = {{SpaceCatalog}},
  title        = {{1196 Sheba}},
  howpublished = {SpaceCatalog, data release DR1 (2026-08-21)},
  year         = {2026},
  url          = {https://spacecatalog.org/object/1196-sheba},
  note         = {Catalogue entry, data release DR1 (2026-08-21). Values from JPL Small-Body Database.}
}

The values above were taken from JPL Small-Body Database — Public domain (NASA/JPL). Citing this page does not replace citing that catalogue.

[

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