Discovery date 12 October 1990 Minor planet category main-belt · Themis Orbits Sun Asteroid group Asteroid belt | MPC designation 15262 Abderhalden Discovered 12 October 1990 Asteroid family Themis family | |
Discovered by F. Börngen
L. D. Schmadel Named after Emil Abderhalden
(physiologist) Alternative names 1990 TG4 · 1978 PJ3
1978 RM3 · 1999 FO42 Discovery site Karl Schwarzschild Observatory Discoverers Freimut Börngen, Lutz D. Schmadel Similar 1996 Adams, 145 Adeona, 588 Achilles, 2101 Adonis, Sun | ||
15262 Abderhalden, provisional designation 1990 TG4, is a carbonaceous Themistian asteroid from the outer region of the asteroid belt, approximately 12 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered by German astronomers Freimut Börngen and Lutz Schmadel at the Karl Schwarzschild Observatory in Tautenburg, eastern Germany, on 12 October 1990.
The dark C-type asteroid is a member of the Themis family, a dynamical family of outer-belt asteroids with nearly coplanar ecliptical orbits. It orbits the Sun at a distance of 2.8–3.7 AU once every 5 years and 9 months (2,105 days). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.14 and an inclination of 1° with respect to the ecliptic. The first precovery was obtained at Crimea–Nauchnij in 1978, extending the asteroid's observation arc by 12 years prior to its discovery.
In October 2013, a rotational light-curve was obtained from photometric observation at the U.S. Palomar Transient Factory, California. The light-curve showed a rotation period of 7000353270000000000♠3.5327±0.0012 hours with a brightness variation of 0.21 in magnitude (U=2). The Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link assumes an albedo of 0.08, a standard albedo for carbonaceous asteroids of this family, and calculates a diameter of 8.4 kilometers, while the NEOWISE mission of NASA's space-based Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer finds an albedo of 0.062 with a corresponding diameter of 12.2 kilometers.
The minor planet was named in memory of Swiss biochemist and physiologist Emil Abderhalden (1877–1950). He was a researcher in the field of physiological chemistry, founder of modern dietetics, and promoter of public welfare. He taught physiology at the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg from 1911 until the end of World War II. Naming citation was published on 13 October 2000 (M.P.C. 41387).