Discovered by Y. Väisälä MPC designation 1407 Lindelof Discovered 21 November 1936 Orbits Sun Discovery site Iso-Heikkilä Observatory | Discovery date 21 November 1936 Minor planet category main-belt · (middle) Absolute magnitude 10.9 Discoverer Yrjö Väisälä Asteroid group Asteroid belt | |
Named after Ernst Lindelöf(topologist) Alternative names 1936 WC · 1977 FLA905 AB People also search for 1478 Vihuri, 1450 Raimonda, 1479 Inkeri | ||
1407 Lindelöf, provisional designation 1936 WC, is a metallic asteroid from the middle region of the asteroid belt, approximately 20 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered on 21 November 1936, by Finnish astronomer Yrjö Väisälä at Turku Observatory in Southwest Finland.
Lindelöf orbits the Sun at a distance of 2.0–3.5 AU once every 4 years and 7 months (1,682 days). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.28 and an inclination of 6° with respect to the ecliptic. In 1905, it was first identified as A905 AB at Heidelberg Observatory, extending the body's observation arc by 31 years prior to its official discovery observation.
French amateur astronomer Pierre Antonini obtained a rotational light-curve of Lindelöf from photometric observations in January 2006. It gave a well-defined rotation period of 31.151 hours with a brightness variation of 0.34 in magnitude (U=3). A 2016-published period of 31.0941 hours was derived from a modeled light-curve using data from the Lowell photometric database.
In the SMASS taxonomy, Lindelöf's spectral class is that of a metallic X-type asteroid, while the Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link (CALL) considers it to be of a stony composition.
According to the surveys carried out by the Infrared Astronomical Satellite IRAS, the Japanese Akari satellite, and NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer with its subsequent NEOWISE mission, Lindelöf measures between 17.39 and 23.85 kilometers in diameter, and its surface has an albedo between and 0.179 and 0.28. The Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link derives an albedo of 0.1791 and a diameter of 20.75 kilometers, using an absolute magnitude of 10.9.
This minor planet was named for Finnish topologist Ernst Leonard Lindelöf (1870–1946), who was a professor of mathematics at Helsinki University. The Lindelöf spaces are also named after him. Naming citation was first mentioned in The Names of the Minor Planets by Paul Herget in 1955 (H 127).