Discovery date 14 September 1955 Minor planet category main-belt · Eos Discovered 14 September 1955 Asteroid family Eos family Asteroid group Asteroid belt | MPC designation 1826 Miller Observation arc 75.54 yr (27,591 days) Orbits Sun Discovery site Goethe Link Observatory Discoverer Indiana Asteroid Program | |
Discovered by Indiana University
(Indiana Asteroid Program) Alternative names 1955 RC1 · 1929 RV
1940 WF · 1950 TD2
1952 BL1 · 1962 AA
1971 TU2 Named after John Miller (entrepreneur) | ||
1826 Miller, provisional designation 1955 RC1, is a stony Eoan asteroid from the outer region of the asteroid belt, approximately 24 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered on 14 September 1955, by the Indiana Asteroid Program at Goethe Link Observatory near Brooklyn, Indiana, United States.
The S-type asteroid is a member of the Eos family, a collisional group of several thousand bodies. Miller orbits the Sun at a distance of 2.7–3.2 AU once every 5 years and 2 months (1,893 days). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.08 and an inclination of 9° with respect to the ecliptic. First identified as 1929 RV at Simeis Observatory, Miller's first used observation was its identification as 1940 WF at Turku in 1940, which extends its observation arc by 15 years prior to its official discovery observation.
In March 2010, a rotational light-curve of Miller was obtained from photometric observation taken at Oakley Southern Sky Observatory in Australia. It gave a longer-than average rotation period of 30.049 hours with a brightness variation of 0.08 magnitude (U=2), superseding a previous result of 6.77 hours by amateur astronomer René Roy, who derived it from a fragmentary light-curve obtained in December 2002 (U=1).
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, Milller measures between 19.74 and 26.34 kilometers in diameter, and its surface has an albedo between 0.111 and 0.196. The Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link derives an albedo of 0.1085 and a diameter of 24.31 kilometers based on an absolute magnitude of 11.1. The asteroid was also involved in the asteroid occultation of a 10th magnitude star in the constellation Cancer in April 2004.
It was named in honor of American entrepreneur John A. Miller (1872–1941), founder of the Astronomy Department at Indiana University and first director of the Kirkwood Observatory, which he built and named for his former teacher. He also built the Sproul Observatory at Swarthmore College in the U.S state of Pennsylvania (also see 1578 Kirkwood). Naming citation was published before November 1977 (M.P.C. 4236).