26 Proserpina is a main-belt asteroid discovered by German astronomer R. Luther on 5 May 1853. It is named after the Roman goddess Proserpina, the daughter of Ceres and the Queen of the Roman Underworld. Another main-belt asteroid, 399 Persephone, discovered in 1895, is named after her Greek counterpart. Its historical symbol was a star inside a pomegranate; it is encoded in Unicode as U+1CECD ASTRONOMICAL SYMBOL FOR ASTEROID PROSERPINA.