18 Melpomene is a large, bright main-belt asteroid that was discovered by J. R. Hind on 24 June 1852,[11] and named after Melpomenē, the Muse of tragedy in Greek mythology.

This asteroid is orbiting the Sun at a distance of 2.296 AU with a period of 3.48 years and an eccentricity (ovalness) of 0.22.

[14] In 1988 a search for satellites or dust orbiting this asteroid was performed using the UH88 telescope at the Mauna Kea Observatories, but the effort came up empty.

[16] Photometric observations during 2012 provided a rotation period of 11.571±0.001 h with a brightness variation of 0.34±0.02 in magnitude, which is consistent with previous studies.

[7][3] Melpomene can reach an apparent magnitude of +7.9 at a favorable opposition near perihelion, such as occurred in September 2002 when it was 0.814 AU (121.8 million km; 317 LD) from Earth.