176 Iduna
Iduna is a large main-belt asteroid that was discovered by German-American astronomer Christian Heinrich Friedrich Peters on October 14, 1877, in Clinton, New York. It is named after Sällskapet Idun, a club in Stockholm that hosted an astronomical conference; Idun is also a Norse goddess. A G-type asteroid, it has a composition similar to that of the largest main-belt asteroid, 1 Ceres.
An occultation of a star by Iduna was observed from Mexico on January 17, 1998.
Photometric observations of this asteroid at the Romer Observatory in Aarhus, Denmark during 1996 gave a light curve with a period of 11.289 ± 0.006 hours and a brightness variation of 0.35 in magnitude. A 2008 study at the Palmer Divide Observatory in Colorado Springs, Colorado gave a period of 11.309 ± 0.005 hours, confirming the 1996 result.
