is a highly eccentric, stony

asteroid An asteroid is a minor planet of the inner Solar System. Sizes and shapes of asteroids vary significantly, ranging from 1-meter rocks to a dwarf planet almost 1000 km in diameter; they are rocky, metallic or icy bodies with no atmosphere. ...

, classified as a

near-Earth object A near-Earth object (NEO) is any small Solar System body whose orbit brings it into proximity with Earth. By convention, a Solar System body is a NEO if its closest approach to the Sun (perihelion) is less than 1.3 astronomical units (AU). ...

of the

Amor Amor ("love" in Latin, Spanish and Portuguese) may refer to: Music Albums * ''Amor'' (Julio Iglesias album), 1982 * ''Amor'' (Andrea Bocelli album), 2006 Songs * "Amor" (Los Auténticos Decadentes song), 2000 * "Amor" (Cristian Castro song), 199 ...

group of asteroids, approximately 3 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered on 22 June 1993, by American astronomers

Eleanor Helin Eleanor Francis "Glo" Helin (née Francis, 19 November 1932 – 25 January 2009) was an American astronomer. She was principal investigator of the Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) program of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. (Some sources gi ...

and Kenneth Lawrence at the U.S.

Palomar Observatory Palomar Observatory is an astronomical research observatory in San Diego County, California, United States, in the Palomar Mountain Range. It is owned and operated by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Research time at the observat ...

in California.

Classification and orbit

The stony

S-type asteroid S-type asteroids are asteroids with a spectral type that is indicative of a siliceous (i.e. stony) mineralogical composition, hence the name. They have relatively high density. Approximately 17% of asteroids are of this type, making it the second ...

orbits the Sun at a distance of 1.1–3.7 AU once every 3 years and 10 months (1,392 days). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.54 and an

inclination Orbital inclination measures the tilt of an object's orbit around a celestial body. It is expressed as the angle between a Plane of reference, reference plane and the orbital plane or Axis of rotation, axis of direction of the orbiting object ...

of 8 ° with respect to the ecliptic. It has an Earth minimum orbital intersection distance of nearly , which corresponds to 71.8 lunar distances. As it crosses the orbit of Mars, it may also be classified as a Mars-crosser, and, on 28 November 2023, it will pass from the Red Planet. The first

precovery In astronomy, precovery (short for pre-discovery recovery) is the process of finding the image of an object in images or photographic plates predating its discovery, typically for the purpose of calculating a more accurate orbit. This happens mos ...

was taken at the Australian

Siding Spring Observatory Siding Spring Observatory near Coonabarabran, New South Wales, Australia, part of the Research School of Astronomy & Astrophysics (RSAA) at the Australian National University (ANU), incorporates the Anglo-Australian Telescope along with a coll ...

in 1981, extending the body's

observation arc In observational astronomy, the observation arc (or arc length) of a Solar System body is the time period between its earliest and latest observations, used for tracing the body's path. It is usually given in days or years. The term is mostly use ...

by 12 years prior to its discovery.

Physical characteristics

Since the 1990s, and up to June 2016, four well-defined rotational lightcurves were obtained for this asteroid from photometric observations, giving a

rotation period The rotation period of a celestial object (e.g., star, gas giant, planet, moon, asteroid) may refer to its sidereal rotation period, i.e. the time that the object takes to complete a single revolution around its axis of rotation relative to the ...

of approximately 4.95 hours with a high brightness variation between 0.53 and 0.82 in magnitude, indicating that the asteroid has a non-spheroidal shape. In the 1990s, Italian astronomer

Stefano Mottola This is a list of minor-planet discoverers credited by the Minor Planet Center with the discovery of one or several minor planets (such as near-Earth and main-belt asteroids, Jupiter trojans and distant objects). , the discovery of 612,011 numb ...

obtained a lightcurve at

La Silla La Silla may refer to: * La Silla Observatory, an astronomical observatory in Chile * Cerro de la Silla, a mountain and natural monument located within the metropolitan area of the city of Monterrey, Nuevo León, in northeastern Mexico. * La Sill ...

during the EUNEASO, a European near-Earth object search and follow-up observation program to determine additional physical parameters (). Further lightcurves were obtained by Polish astronomer

Wiesław Z. Wiśniewski Wiesław Z. Wiśniewski (May 2, 1931 in Poland – February 28, 1994 in Tucson, Arizona, United States) was a Polish astronomer. Wisniewski was born and educated in Poland. He survived the Nazi occupation and many of his later insights and viewpo ...

at UA's LPL in October 1993, and by Czech astronomer

Petr Pravec Petr Pravec (born September 17, 1967) is a Czech astronomer and a discoverer of minor planets, born in Třinec, Czech Republic. Pravec is a prolific discoverer of binary asteroids, expert in photometric observations and rotational lightcurves a ...

Ondřejov Observatory The Ondřejov Observatory (; cs, Observatoř Ondřejov) is the principal observatory of the Astronomical Institute () of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. It is located near the village of Ondřejov, southeast of Prague, Czech R ...

in September 1997 (). In June 2016, the fourth and most recent photometric observation was made by American astronomer Brian Warner at his Palmer Divide Station, Colorado, which gave a period of hours with an amplitude of 0.82 in magnitude ().

Diameter

While in the 1990s, Stefano Mottola estimated the asteroid to measure 3.8 kilometers in diameter (H = 15.03), the ''Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link'' assumes a standard

albedo Albedo (; ) is the measure of the diffuse reflection of sunlight, solar radiation out of the total solar radiation and measured on a scale from 0, corresponding to a black body that absorbs all incident radiation, to 1, corresponding to a body ...

for stony asteroids of 0.20 and derives a shorter diameter of 2.8 kilometers, based on an absolute magnitude of 15.14.

Notes

References

External links

Asteroid Lightcurve Database (LCDB)
query form

)
Dictionary of Minor Planet Names
Google books

– Observatoire de Genève, Raoul Behrend * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:1993 MF 005836 Discoveries by Eleanor F. Helin Discoveries by Kenneth J. Lawrence 005836 19930622