Hecate Ring

Mythology:

Hecate is a goddess in ancient Greek religion and mythology, most often shown holding a pair of torches, a key, or snakes or accompanied
by dogs and in later periods depicted in triple form. She is variously associated with crossroads, entranceways, night, light, magic,
witchcraft, knowledge of herbs and poisonous plants, ghosts, necromancy, and sorcery. Her earliest appearance in literature was
in Hesiod’s Theogony in the 8th century BCE as a goddess of great honor with domains in the sky, earth, and sea. Her place of origin is
debated by scholars, but she had popular followings amongst the witches of Thessaly
and was an important sanctuary among the Carian Greeks of Asia Minor in Lagina.

Astronomy:

Hekate is a minor-planet designation: 100 Hekate is a large main-belt asteroid. This is a stony S-type asteroid with a diameter of 87+5−4 km
and a sidereal rotation period of 27.07 h. It orbits in the same region of space as the Hygiea asteroid family, though it is actually
an unrelated interloper. However, its geometric albedo of 0.22±0.03 is too high, and it is of the wrong spectral class to be part of
the dark carbonaceous Hygiea family. It is listed as a member of the Hecuba group of asteroids that orbit near the 2:1 mean-motion
resonance with Jupiter.
Hekate was the 100th asteroid to be discovered, by Canadian-American astronomer J. C. Watson (his fourth discovery) on July 11, 1868.
It is named after Hecate, the goddess of witchcraft in Greek mythology, but its name also commemorates it as the hundredth asteroid,
as hekaton is Greek for ‘hundred’.
A Hekatean occultation of a star was observed on July 14, 2003, from New Zealand.