5430 Luu, provisional designation , is a stony Phocaea

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. ...

from the inner regions of the asteroid belt, approximately 7 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered on 12 May 1988, by American astronomer couple

Carolyn Carolyn is a female given name, a variant of Caroline. Other spellings include Karolyn, Carolyne, Carolynn or Carolynne. Caroline itself is one of the feminine forms of Charles. List of Notable People *Carolyn Bennett (born 1950), Canadian pol ...

and Eugene Shoemaker at

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 ...

, California, and later named after astronomer

Jane Luu Jane X. Luu ( vi, ; born July 1963) is a Vietnamese-American astronomer and defense systems engineer. She was awarded the Kavli Prize (shared with David C. Jewitt and Michael Brown) for 2012 "for discovering and characterizing the Kuiper Belt ...

Orbit and classification

''Luu'' is a member of the

Phocaea family The Phocaea family ( ; adj. ''Phocaean''; ) is a collisional family of asteroids located between 2.25 and 2.5 AU in the inner region of the asteroid belt. Phocaea asteroids are of stony S-type composition and have orbits with eccentricities ...

(). It orbits the Sun in the

inner Interior may refer to: Arts and media * ''Interior'' (Degas) (also known as ''The Rape''), painting by Edgar Degas * ''Interior'' (play), 1895 play by Belgian playwright Maurice Maeterlinck * ''The Interior'' (novel), by Lisa See * Interior de ...

main-belt at a distance of 1.8–2.9 AU once every 3 years and 8 months (1,328 days). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.22 and an inclination of 24 ° with respect to the ecliptic. 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

Crimea–Nauchnij The Crimean Astrophysical Observatory (CrAO, obs. code: 095) is located at Nauchnij research campus, near the Central Crimean city of Bakhchysarai, on the Crimean peninsula. CrAO is often called simply by its location and campus name, ...

in 1970, extending the asteroid's observation arc by 18 years prior to its discovery.

Physical characteristics

''Luu'' has been characterized as a common S-type asteroid.

Rotation period

In April 2006, photometric observations of ''Luu'' collected by American astronomer

Brian D. Warner 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 ...

at his Palmer Divide Station, Colorado, show 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 hours with a brightness variation of magnitude (). A second, tentative lightcurve was obtained by French astronomer René Roy in July 2007. It gave a period of hours and an amplitude of 0.05 in magnitude ().

Diameter and albedo

According to the surveys carried out by the Japanese Akari satellite and NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer with its subsequent NEOWISE mission, ''Luu'' measures 6.5 and 8.3 kilometers in diameter and its surface has an albedo between 0.21 and 0.26. The ''Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link'' assumes an albedo of 0.23 – derived from

25 Phocaea Phocaea (minor planet designation: 25 Phocaea) is a stony asteroid from the inner regions of the asteroid belt, approximately 75 kilometers in diameter. It is the parent body of the Phocaea family. Discovered by Jean Chacornac in 1853, it was n ...

, the family's most massive member and namesake – and calculates a diameter of 7.6 kilometers with an absolute magnitude of 12.8.

Naming

This minor planet is named in honor of Vietnamese-American astronomer Jane X. Luu (born 1963) for her research and discovering the first and subsequent members of the

Kuiper Belt The Kuiper belt () is a circumstellar disc in the outer Solar System, extending from the orbit of Neptune at 30 astronomical units (AU) to approximately 50 AU from the Sun. It is similar to the asteroid belt, but is far larger—20 times ...

. She also studied the physical properties of these bodies and the

coma A coma is a deep state of prolonged unconsciousness in which a person cannot be awakened, fails to respond normally to painful stimuli, light, or sound, lacks a normal wake-sleep cycle and does not initiate voluntary actions. Coma patients exhi ...

of potentially Extinct comets. The approved naming citation was published by the

Minor Planet Center The Minor Planet Center (MPC) is the official body for observing and reporting on minor planets under the auspices of the International Astronomical Union (IAU). Founded in 1947, it operates at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. Function ...

on 1 July 1996 ().

References

External links

Lightcurve plot of 5430 Luu
Palmer Divide Observatory, B. D. Warner (2006)
Asteroid Lightcurve Database (LCDB)
query form

)
Dictionary of Minor Planet Names
Google books

– Observatoire de Genève, Raoul Behrend

– Minor Planet Center * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Luu 005430 Discoveries by Carolyn S. Shoemaker Discoveries by Eugene Merle Shoemaker Minor planets named for people Named minor planets 19880512