Apollo & Apollo Asteroids - Versailles, France
Posted by: 
Metro2
N 48° 48.499 E 002° 06.611
31U E 434667 N 5406529
Apollo is the Greek & Roman God of light and the sun, truth and prophecy, medicine, healing, plague, music, poetry, arts, archery, and more.
Waymark Code: WMD09E
Location: Île-de-France, France
Date Posted: 11/01/2011
Views: 15
This marble sculpture is located in the Garden of the Versailles Palace. It depicts Apollo naked but for a fig leaf holding his characteristic lyre with his left hand.
Unfortunately the poster of this waymark didn't get a photo of the accompanying placard...so, the artist is unknown.
Wikipedia (
visit link) informs us:
"The cult centers of Apollo in Greece, Delphi and Delos, date from the 8th century BCE. The Delos sanctuary was primarily dedicated to Artemis, Apollo's twin sister. At Delphi, Apollo was venerated as the slayer of Pytho. For the Greeks, Apollo was all the Gods in one and through the centuries he acquired different functions which could originate from different gods. In archaic Greece he was the "prophet", the oracular god who in older times was connected with "healing". In classical Greece he was the god of light and of music, but in popular religion he had a strong function to keep away evil."
Concerning the Apollo Asteroids, Wikipedia (
visit link) informs us:
"The Apollo asteroids are a group of near-Earth asteroids named after 1862 Apollo, the first asteroid of this group to be discovered by Karl Wilhelm Reinmuth. They are Earth-crosser asteroids that have orbital semi-major axes greater than that of the Earth (> 1 AU) and a perihelion distance (q) < 1.017 AU. Some can get very close to the Earth, making them a potential threat to our planet (the closer their semi-major axis is to Earth's, the less eccentricity is needed for the orbits to cross).
The largest known Apollo asteroid is 1866 Sisyphus, with a diameter of about 10 km."