On what date was asteroid 55 Pandora discovered?

Asteroid 55 Pandora was discovered on 10 September 1858.

The discovery was made by George Mary Searle at the Dudley Observatory in Albany, New York. Pandora became the 55th numbered minor planet after its orbit was established sufficiently for it to receive a permanent designation. Its name came from Pandora in Greek mythology.

The asteroid belongs to the main belt, the broad region of small bodies orbiting between Mars and Jupiter. It is an S-type asteroid, a classification associated with stony compositions and relatively reflective surfaces compared with darker carbon-rich asteroids.

The date is separate from the discovery of Saturn’s moon Pandora, which was identified in Voyager 1 images in 1980. Both objects share a mythological name, but they are different bodies discovered more than a century apart and by different methods.