Discovery date 22 June 1993 Alternative names 1993 MF Observation arc 35.62 yr (13,010 days) Orbits Sun Asteroid group Asteroid belt | MPC designation (5836) 1993 MF Discovered 22 June 1993 | |
Discovered by E. F. HelinK. J. Lawrence Discoverers Kenneth J. Lawrence, Eleanor F. Helin Similar 4015 Wilson–Harrington, Sun, 9969 Braille, (55565) 2002 AW197, 6489 Golevka | ||
(5836) 1993 MF is a highly eccentric, stony asteroid, classified as a near-Earth object of the Amor group of asteroids, approximately 3 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered on 22 June 1993, by American astronomers Eleanor Helin and Kenneth Lawrence at the U.S. Palomar Observatory in California.
The stony S-type asteroid 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 of 8° with respect to the ecliptic. It has an Earth minimum orbital intersection distance of nearly 0.184 AU (27,500,000 km), 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 0.02535 AU (3,792,000 km) from the Red Planet. The first precovery was taken at the Australian Siding Spring Observatory in 1981, extending the body's observation arc by 12 years prior to its discovery.
Since the 1990s, and up to June 2016, four well-defined rotational light-curves were obtained for this asteroid from photometric observations, giving a rotation period 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 obtained a light-curve at La Silla during the EUNEASO, a European near-Earth object search and follow-up observation program to determine additional physical parameters (U=3). Further light-curves were obtained by Polish astronomer Wiesław Z. Wiśniewski at UA's LPL in October 1993, and by Czech astronomer Petr Pravec at Ondřejov Observatory in September 1997 (U=3/3). In June 2016, the fourth and most recent photometric observation was made by American astronomer Brian D. Warner at his Palmer Divide Station, Colorado, which gave a period of 7000494800000000000♠4.948±0.005 hours with an amplitude of 0.82 in magnitude (U=3).
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 for stony asteroids of 0.20 and derives a shorter diameter of 2.8 kilometers, based on an absolute magnitude of 15.14.