Discovery date 24 September 1960 Minor planet category main-belt Discovered 24 September 1960 Asteroid group Asteroid belt | Observation arc 81.27 yr (29683 days) Orbits Sun | |
Alternative names 6559 P–L · 1934 XH1941 BH · 1952 BP1952 DT · 1971 SU11972 YT · 1973 AG1 Similar Asteroid belt, Solar System, Sun | ||
2003 Harding, also designated 6559 P–L, is an asteroid in the asteroid belt discovered on September 24, 1960 by the three astronomers Cornelis van Houten, Ingrid van Houten-Groeneveld and Tom Gehrels at Palomar, California. The asteroid is a member of the Eos family. Orbiting the Sun at a distance of 2.7–3.4 AU once every 5 years and 4 months, the asteroid's path is nearly coplanar to the plane of the ecliptic with an orbital inclination of less than 2 degrees. It has a short rotation period of three hours.
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 Johannes van Houten and Ingrid van Houten-Groeneveld at Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands. The trio are credited with several thousand asteroid discoveries.
The asteroid is named after German astronomer Karl Ludwig Harding (1765–1834), who discovered the minor planet 3 Juno. He is also honored by the lunar crater Harding.