704 Interamnia is a large F-type asteroid. With a mean diameter of around 330 kilometres, it is the fifth-largest asteroid, after Ceres, Vesta, Pallas and Hygiea. Its mean distance from the Sun is 3.067 AU. It was discovered on 2 October 1910 by Vincenzo Cerulli, and named after the Latin name for Teramo, Italy, where Cerulli worked. Its mass is probably between fifth and tenth highest in the asteroid belt, with a mass estimated to be 1.2% of the mass of the entire asteroid belt. Observations by the Very Large Telescope's SPHERE imager in 2017–2019, combined with occultation results, indicate that the shape of Interamnia may be consistent with hydrostatic equilibrium for a body of its density with a rotational period of 7.6 hours. (Its current period is 8.7 hours.) This suggests that Interamnia may have formed as an equilibrium body, and that impacts changed its rotational period after it fully solidified.
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This article is an automated import of the Wikipedia article "704 Interamnia", available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/704_Interamnia . Text is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.