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 and/or mountain:
“How clean the sun when seen in its idea,
Washed in the remotest cleanliness of a heaven
That has expelled us and our images . . .
The death of one god is the death of all.
Let purple Phoebus lie in umber harvest,
Let Phoebus slumber and die in autumn umber....”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“The mountain may be approached more easily and directly on horseback and on foot from the northeast side, by the Aroostook road, and the Wassataquoik River; but in that case you see much less of the wilderness, none of the glorious river and lake scenery, and have no experience of the batteau and the boatman’s life.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)