1891 Gondola

This minor planet is named after the type of small single-oar boat that is iconic to the Venetian waterways. In the past, they were considered cheap scrappy boats of all shapes and colors that wove between the larger ones on the canals in order to transport a few people quickly. Nowadays, as a romantic symbol of the city, they are fewer, and more uniform and elegant in design, ferrying tourists around for a fee.

This name was chosen by discoverer Paul Wild, who was known for choosing strange names for asteroids. The Minor Planet Dictionary gives the following reasoning: "Selected as a beautiful sounding word, well suited to an object moving smoothly and silently across the sky."

The symbol of this asteroid is a depiction of a gondola, with an oar crossing the left side diagonally, and a star above. The gondola is represented as a lunate figure, with the larger curve on the bottom being a half-circle, and the shorter curve connecting to the first at the two-thirds mark, and dipping down to the one-third mark.

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