3494 Purple Mountain

3494 Purple Mountain is a small main belt asteroid. It is not purple; its unusual name comes from the Purple Mountain Observatory in China, where it was rediscovered in 1980. (It had been seen but lost several times since 1962. See lost asteroids.)

Purple Mountain is a vestoid, a fragment blasted off the giant asteroid 4 Vesta by the impact that formed the Vestian collisional family. A spectroscopic analysis showed it to have a composition very similar to the cumulate eucrite meteorites.

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Famous quotes containing the words purple mountain, purple and/or mountain:

    “O beautiful for spacious skies,
    For amber waves of grain,
    For purple mountain majesties
    Above the fruited plain!”
    —Katharine Lee Bates (1859–1929)

    “I never saw a Purple Cow,
    I never hope to see one;”
    —Gelett Burgess (1866–1951)

    “Now the appearance of the glory of the LORD was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the people of Israel.”
    —Bible: Hebrew, Exodus 24:17.