918 Itha
918 Itha (prov. designation: or ) is a stony asteroid and the namesake as well as the principal body of the Itha family, located in the outer region of the asteroid belt. It was discovered by German astronomer Karl Reinmuth at the Heidelberg Observatory on 22 August 1919. The S-type asteroid has a notably short rotation period of only 3.5 hours and measures approximately in diameter. It was named "Itha", a female name taken from the almanac Lahrer Hinkender Bote, unrelated to the discoverer's contemporaries. Orbit and classification When applying the synthetic hierarchical clustering method (HCM) by Nesvorný, Itha is the principal body and namesake of the Itha family (), a small family of stony asteroids with only a few dozen known members. Other larger and low-numbered members of this family include 968 Petunia, 1067 Lunaria, 3787 Aivazovskij, 4119 Miles and 5232 Jordaens. However, according to another HCM-analysis by Milani and Knežević (AstDys), Itha is a background asteroid as it is not a legitimate family in their analysis. It orbits the Sun in the outer asteroid belt at a distance of 2.3–3.4 AU once every 4 years and 10 months (1,770 days; semi-major axis of 2.86 AU). Its orbit has