814 Tauris (prov. designation: or ) is a dark and very large background asteroid, approximately in diameter, located the outer regions of the asteroid belt. It was discovered on 2 January 1916, by astronomer Russian Grigory Neujmin at the Simeiz Observatory on Crimea. The carbonaceous C-type asteroid has a longer-than average rotation period of 35.8 hours. It was named after the ancient name of the Crimean peninsula where the discovering observatory is located. Orbit and classification Tauris is a non-family asteroid of the main belt's background population when applying the hierarchical clustering method to its proper orbital elements. It orbits the Sun in the outer main-belt at a distance of 2.2–4.1 AU once every 5 years and 7 months (2,048 days; semi-major axis of 3.16 AU). Its orbit has a notably high eccentricity of 0.31 and an inclination of 22° with respect to the ecliptic. This gives it a TJupiter of 3.0250, near the boundary of 3, which separates asteroids (above 3) from the Jupiter-family comets (below 3). Tauris was first observed as at Taunton Observatory on 12 May 1907. The body's observation arc begins at Heidelberg Observatory on 30 January 1916, or four weeks after its official discovery observation at Simeiz Observatory. Naming This minor planet was named after the ancient name of the Crimean peninsula, Tauris. Lutz Schmadel, the author of the Dictionary of Minor Planet Names also mentions a mountain with the same name on the southwest coast of Crimea. In addition, Baltic German astronomer Ludwig von Struve (1858–1920) also taught astronomy at the Tavrida University (Tauris University) in Simferopol, a large city on the Crimean peninsula (R. Bremer). The was also mentioned in The Names of the Minor Planets by Paul Herget in 1955 (). Physical characteristics In the Tholen classification as well in the Bus–Binzel SMASS classification, Tauris is a common, carbonaceous C-type asteroid, while in both the Tholen- and SMASS-like taxonomy of the Small Solar System Objects Spectroscopic Survey (S3OS2), it is an X-type asteroid. Rotation period In 1983, a rotational lightcurve of Tauris, obtained from photometric observations with the ESO 0.5-metre telescope at La Silla, Chile, was by published by Belgian astronomer Henri Debehogne in collaboration with Italian astronomers Giovanni de Sanctis and Vincenzo Zappalà. Lightcurve analysis gave a rotation period of hours with a brightness variation of magnitude (). In May 2013, Michael S. Alkema at the Elephant Head Observatory in Arizona