Discovery date 24 September 1960 Named after Bernhard Schmidt Discovered 24 September 1960 Orbits Sun Asteroid group Asteroid belt | MPC designation 1743 Schmidt Minor planet category main-belt Absolute magnitude 12.48 Discovery site Palomar Observatory | |
Discovered by Palomar–Leiden survey
C. J. van Houten, I. van Houten-Groeneveld and Tom Gehrels Alternative names 4109 P–L · 1931 BJ
1939 CN · 1943 EA
1947 GD · 1951 JU
1952 QD Discoverers Tom Gehrels, Cornelis Johannes van Houten, Ingrid van Houten-Groeneveld People also search for Sun, 9511 Klingsor, 11767 Milne |
1743 Schmidt, also designated 4109 P–L, is an asteroid from the asteroid belt, about 17 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered on September 24, 1960, by Cornelis van Houten and Ingrid van Houten-Groeneveld at Leiden, on photographic plates taken by Tom Gehrels at Palomar. The asteroid orbits the Sun at a distance of 2.1–2.8 AU once every 3.89 years (1,421 days). It has a rotation period of 17.5 hours and a geometric albedo of 0.06.
The designation P–L stands for Palomar–Leiden, named after Palomar Observatory and Leiden Observatory, which collaborated on the fruitful Palomar–Leiden survey in the 1960s. Gehrels used Palomar's Samuel Oschin telescope (also known as the 48-inch Schmidt Telescope), and shipped the photographic plates to Cornelis van Houten and Ingrid van Houten-Groeneveld at Leiden Observatory. The trio are credited with several thousand asteroid discoveries.
The asteroid was named after Baltic German optician and astronomer Bernhard Schmidt (1879–1935), the inventor of the Schmidt camera.