Discovered by B. A. Skiff MPC designation 3872 Akirafujii Minor planet category main-belt · Eunomia Discovered 12 January 1983 Discoverer Brian A. Skiff Discovery site Anderson Mesa Station | Discovery date 12 January 1983 Alternative names 1983 AV · 1931 AY Observation arc 85.82 yr (31,347 days) Orbits Sun Asteroid family Eunomia family | |
Named after Akira Fujii (Astrophotography) Similar Sun, (434326) 2004 JG6, 85 Io, 812 Adele, 258 Tyche | ||
3872 Akirafujii, provisional designation 1983 AV, is a carbonaceous Eunomia asteroid from the middle region of the asteroid belt, approximately 15 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered on 12 January 1983, by American astronomer Brian Skiff at Lowell's Anderson Mesa Station, near Flagstaff, Arizona.
The dark C-type asteroid is a member of the Eunomia family, a large group of otherwise predominantly stony asteroids and the most prominent family in the intermediate main-belt. It orbits the Sun at a distance of 2.1–3.2 AU once every 4 years and 4 months (1,586 days). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.20 and an inclination of 13° with respect to the ecliptic. The first precovery was taken at Lowell Observatory in 1931, extending the asteroid's observation arc by 52 years prior to its discovery.
Two rotational light-curves were obtained through photometric observations at the Chiro Observatory, Australia, and at the U.S. Preston Gott Observatory, Texas, in August 2005 and November 2012, respectively. The ambiguous light-curve from Chiro Observatory showed a rotation period of 7001106350000000000♠10.635 hours with a brightness variation of 0.35 in magnitude, when using the longer solution (U=2). The other light-curve at Preston Gott gave a period of 7001222890000000000♠22.289±0.003 hours with an amplitude of 0.23 (U=2-).
According to the space-based surveys carried out by the Infrared Astronomical Satellite IRAS, the Japanese Akari satellite, and the NEOWISE mission of NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, the asteroid measures between 12.5 and 21.4 kilometers, and its surface has a low albedo in the range of 0.03 to 0.09. The Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link (CALL) derives an albedo of 0.07 and calculates a diameter of 15.2 kilometers, based on an absolute magnitude of 12.6. Contrary to the large-scale survey performed by Pan-STARRS, CALL classifies the body as a S-type rather than a carbonaceous C-type asteroid.
The minor planet was named in honour of Japanese astronomer Akira Fujii (b. 1941), a prominent astronomy communicator and astrophotographer at his Chiro Observatory in Shirakawa, Fukushima prefecture. Editor of the "Star Handbook" (Hoshi No Techou) and author of a well known astronomy book series for young people, Fujii has also publicized astronomy on TV, and he has toured the country during the 1986 apparition of Halley's Comet, encouraging the public to observe it with a 0.6-meter reflector telescope mounted on his trailer. Internationally, Fujii is most famous for his excellent celestial images. Naming citation was published on 29 November 1993 (M.P.C. 22829).