218 Bianca is a sizeable Main beltasteroid. It is an S-type asteroid. It was discovered by Johann Palisa on 4 September 1880, in Pola and was named after the Austro-Hungarian opera singer Bianca Bianchi (real name Bertha Schwarz). The Vienna newspapers contained several published accounts of the circumstances surrounding the honor extended to the diva in Spring 1882.[5] In the late 1990s, a network of astronomers worldwide gathered lightcurve data that was ultimately used to derive the spin states and shape models of ten new asteroids, including (218) Bianca. The shape model for this asteroid is asymmetrical.[4][6]
References
^Benjamin Smith (1903) The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
^ abcdPravec, P.; et al. (May 2012), "Absolute Magnitudes of Asteroids and a Revision of Asteroid Albedo Estimates from WISE Thermal Observations", Asteroids, Comets, Meteors 2012, Proceedings of the conference held May 16–20, 2012 in Niigata, Japan, no. 1667, Bibcode:2012LPICo1667.6089P. See Table 4.
^Durech, J.; Kaasalainen, M.; Marciniak, A.; Allen, W. H. et al. "Asteroid brightness and geometry", Astronomy and Astrophysics, Volume 465, Issue 1, April I 2007, pp. 331-337.