25680 Walterhansen

25680 Walterhansen (provisional designation: 2000 AP106) is a main-belt minor planet. It was discovered by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research project in Socorro, New Mexico, on January 5, 2000. It is named after Walter Preston Hansen, an American high school student whose physics team project won second place at the 2009 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. Asteroids (from Greek 'star' and 'like, in form') are a class of Small Solar System Bodies in orbit around the Sun. They have also been called planetoids, especially the larger ones. These terms have historically been applied to any astronomical object orbiting the Sun that did not show the disk of a planet and was not observed to have the characteristics of an active comet, but as small objects in the outer Solar System were discovered, their volatile-based surfaces were found to more closely resemble comets, and so were often distinguished from traditional asteroids.... Mehr