Discovered by NEAT MPC designation 19763 Klimesh Absolute magnitude 13.2 Discovery site GEODSS, Haleakala | Discovery date 18 June 2000 Alternative names 2000 MC · 1998 AX10 Discovered 18 June 2000 Orbits Sun Asteroid group Asteroid belt | |
Named after Matthew Klimesh(JPL researcher) Discoverer | ||
19763 Klimesh, provisional designation 2000 MC, is a stony Phocaea asteroid and slow rotator from the inner regions of the asteroid belt, approximately 7 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered on 18 June 2000, by NASA's and JPL's Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking program (NEAT) with the Maui Space Surveillance System (MSSS) at the Haleakala Observatory site on the U.S. island of Maui, Hawaii.
The S-type asteroid is a member of the Phocaea family, a group of asteroids with similar orbital characteristics. It orbits the Sun at a distance of 1.9–2.9 AU once every 3 years and 8 months (1,350 days). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.20 and an inclination of 23° with respect to the ecliptic. The asteroid's observation arc begins 15 years prior to its discovery, due to a precovery taken at the Australian Siding Spring Observatory in 1985.
It has a very long rotation period of 101 hours with a brightness amplitude of 6999670000000000000♠0.67 in magnitude, as observed by Czech astronomer Petr Pravec at the Ondřejov Observatory during the body's 2011-opposition (U=2). At the same time an alternative analysis of a fragmentary light-curve analysis by Italian astronomer Silvano Casulli, however, only gave a period of 4.4 hours with an amplitude of 0.12 (U=1). The body is possibly a "tumbler", that is, it might undergo a non-principal axis rotation. According to the surveys carried out by the NEOWISE mission of NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, the asteroid has a diameter of 7.3 kilometers with an albedo of 0.18 and 0.16, based on the original and Pravec's revised data set, respectively.
The minor planet was named after JPL researcher Matthew Klimesh (b. 1968), developer of the compression algorithm used for handling the vast amount of data obtained by the discovering NEAT program. Since 1996 at JPL's Communications Systems and Research Section, his work includes data compression, rate–distortion theory and channel coding. Naming citation was published on 9 May 2001 (M.P.C. 42677).