149 Medusa

149 Medusa is a bright-coloured, stony main-belt asteroid.

It was discovered by J. Perrotin on September 21, 1875 and named after the Gorgon Medusa, a snake-haired monster in Greek mythology.

When it was discovered, Medusa was by far the smallest asteroid found (although this was not known at that time). Since then, many thousands of smaller asteroids have been found. It was also the closest asteroid to the Sun discovered up to that point, beating the long-held record of 8 Flora. It remained the closest asteroid to the Sun until 433 Eros and 434 Hungaria were found in 1898, leading to the discovery of two new families of asteroids inward from the 4:1 Kirkwood gap which forms the boundary of the main belt.

It has also a rather long rotation period of 26 hours.