Discovered by M. Laugier MPC designation 1651 Behrens Discovered 23 April 1936 Discoverer Marguerite Laugier Discovery site Nice Observatory | Discovery date 23 April 1936 Minor planet category main-belt · Flora Orbits Sun Asteroid family Flora family Asteroid group Asteroid belt | |
Named after Johann Behrens
(pastor, astronomer) Alternative names 1936 HD · 1939 EJ
1940 QD · 1944 YA
1947 WA · 1950 TB4
1952 FF · 1952 HB
1952 KG · 1958 BC
1961 AB · 1963 UQ People also search for Sun, 2393 Suzuki, 2384 Schulhof | ||
1651 Behrens, provisional designation 1936 HD, is a stony Florian asteroid from the inner regions of the asteroid belt, approximately 10 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered on 23 April 1936, by French astronomer Marguerite Laugier at Nice Observatory in southeastern France. It was independently discovered by Karl Reinmuth at Heidelberg, Germany in the following month.
Behrens is an S-type asteroid and member of the Flora family, a large group of stony asteroids in the inner main-belt. It orbits the Sun at a distance of 2.0–2.3 AU once every 3 years and 3 months (1,175 days). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.07 and an inclination of 5° with respect to the ecliptic. As no precoveries were taken, and no prior identifications were made, the body's observation arc begins with its official discovery observation.
Astronomers Laurent Bernasconi and Stéphane Charbonnel obtained a rotational light-curve of Behrens from photometric observations made in August 2001. It gave a rotation period of 34.34 hours with a brightness variation of 0.16 magnitude (U=2).
According to the survey carried out by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer with its subsequent NEOWISE mission, Behrens measures between 8.96 and 10.33 kilometers in diameter, and its surface has an albedo between 0.20 and 0.318. The Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link assumes an albedo of 0.24 – derived from 8 Flora, the largest member and namesake of this orbital family – and calculates a diameter of 10.31 kilometers, using an absolute magnitude of 12.1.
Based on a proposal by Otto Kippes, who verified the discovery, this asteroid was named after Johann Behrens (1889–1978), German amateur astronomer and pastor at Detern, in lower Saxony. He was known for his orbit computations on comets and minor planets. Naming citation was published on 1 October 1980 (M.P.C. 5523).