Discovered by H. E. Wood MPC designation 1663 van den Bos Discovered 4 August 1926 Discoverer Harry Edwin Wood Discovery site Union Observatory | Discovery date 4 August 1926 Minor planet category main-belt · Flora Orbits Sun Asteroid family Flora family Asteroid group Asteroid belt | |
Named after Willem van den Bos
(astronomer) Alternative names 1926 PE · 1928 DD
1936 OM · 1948 BE
1948 EG1 · 1949 KE
1950 XD · 1963 SC People also search for Sun, 1595 Tanga, 982 Franklina | ||
1663 van den Bos, provisional designation 1926 PE, is a stony Florian asteroid and an exceptionally slow rotator from the inner regions of the asteroid belt, approximately 12 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered on 4 August 1926, by English astronomer Harry Edwin Wood at Johannesburg Observatory in South Africa.
The S-type asteroid is a member of the Flora family, a large group of stony asteroids in the main-belt. It orbits the Sun at a distance of 1.8–2.6 AU once every 3 years and 4 months (1,224 days). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.18 and an inclination of 5° with respect to the ecliptic. In March 2082, van den Bos will pass 29 Amphitrite at a distance of 0.0065 AU (972,000 km). The body's observation arc begins with a post-recovery observation taken at Johannesburg in 1936, when it was also identified as 1936 OM, which is a full decade after its official discovery observation from 1926.
In October 2010, a rotational light-curve of van den Bos was obtained from photometric observations by astronomers Robert Stephens and David Higgins. It gave a rotation period of 740 hours with a brightness variation of 0.80 magnitude (U=3-). It is one of the slowest rotating minor planets (see list) and a suspected tumbler, that has an non-principal axis rotation. At the same time, photometric observations at the Shadowbox Observatory gave an alternative, yet ambiguous period of 155 hours with an amplitude of 0.5 magnitude (U=1).
According to the surveys carried out by the Japanese Akari satellite and NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer with its subsequent NEOWISE mission, van den Bos measures between 7.58 and 13.54 kilometers in diameter, and its surface has an albedo between 0.171 and 0.255. The Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link derives an albedo of 0.2045 and a diameter of 12.25 kilometers using an absolute magnitude of 11.9.
It was named in honor of Dutch-born, South African astronomer Willem Hendrik van den Bos (1896–1974), former director of the Union Observatory (1941–1956) and president of the Astronomical Society of South Africa (1943–1955). He made visual micrometric observations and discovered thousands of double stars. Naming citation was published before November 1977 (M.P.C. 3297).