28 Bellona is a large main-beltasteroid. It was discovered by German astronomer R. Luther on March 1, 1854, and named after Bellōna, the Roman goddess of war; the name was chosen to mark the beginning of the Crimean War. Its historical symbol was Bellona's whip and spear; it is in the pipeline for Unicode 17.0 as U+1CECE ().[8][9]
Bellona is a stony (S-type) asteroid with a cross-section size of around 100–120 km. 28 Bellona is orbiting the Sun with a period of 4.63 years.
Bellona has been studied by radar.[10]Photometric observations of this asteroid at the Palmer Divide Observatory in Colorado Springs, Colorado in 2007 gave a light curve with a period of 15.707 ± 0.002 hours and a brightness variation of 0.27 ± 0.03 in magnitude. This report is in close agreement with a period estimate of 15.695 hours reported in 1983, and rejects a longer period of 16.523 hours reported in 1979.[11]
^Warner, Brian D. (December 2007), "Asteroid Lightcurve Analysis at the Palmer Divide Observatory - March-May 2007", The Minor Planet Bulletin, 34 (4): 104–107, Bibcode:2007MPBu...34..104W.