5900 Jensen, provisional designation , is a dark Lixiaohua
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 outer regions of the
asteroid belt
The asteroid belt is a torus-shaped region in the Solar System, located roughly between the orbits of the planets Jupiter and Mars. It contains a great many solid, irregularly shaped bodies, of many sizes, but much smaller than planets, called ...
, approximately 19 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered on 3 October 1986, by Danish astronomer Poul Jensen at the
Brorfelde Observatory
Brorfelde Observatory ( da, Brorfelde Observatoriet; obs. code: 054) is an astronomical observatory located in Brorfelde near Holbæk, Denmark. It is home to the Brorfelde Schmidt Telescope and was run as a branch of the Copenhagen Uni ...
in Denmark. The asteroid was named for the discoverer and his wife Bodil Jensen.
asteroid family
An asteroid family is a population of asteroids that share similar proper orbital elements, such as semimajor axis, eccentricity, and orbital inclination. The members of the families are thought to be fragments of past asteroid collisions. An a ...
with more than 700 known members, consisting of C-type and
X-type asteroid The X-group of asteroids collects together several types with similar spectra, but probably quite different compositions.
Tholen classification
In the Tholen classification the X-group consists of the following types:
* E-type – with high al ...
s. The family's namesake is 3556 Lixiaohua.
It orbits the Sun in the