Discovery date 16 October 1977 Minor planet category Main belt Discovered 16 October 1977 Orbits Sun Asteroid group Asteroid belt | MPC designation 9708 Gouka Observation arc 13491 d
36.94 yr Absolute magnitude 14.6 Discovery site Palomar Observatory | |
Discovered by C. J. van Houten, I. van Houten-Groeneveld, and T. Gehrels Alternative names MPO 309227, 1990 VF11, 1990 WX8, 1996 JH15, 4140 T-3, T/4140 T-3 Discoverers Tom Gehrels, Cornelis Johannes van Houten, Ingrid van Houten-Groeneveld People also search for Sun, 9511 Klingsor, 11767 Milne | ||
9708 Gouka (also known as 4140 T-3, 1990 VF11, 1990 WX8, and 1996 JH15) is a main belt asteroid.
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Discovery and naming
This asteroid was originally discovered in observations made on October 16, 1977 by Cornelis Johannes van Houten and Ingrid van Houten-Groeneveld on photographic plates taken by Tom Gehrels with the Samuel Oschin telescope at the Palomar Observatory. At that time, the asteroid was given the provisional designation "4140 T-3". The asteroid was renamed Gouka after Adriaan Jacobus Gouka (1879-1963), Dutch co-founder in 1901 of the NVWS, the Dutch Astronomical and Meteorological Society. The name was suggested by H. van Woerden. The asteroid was also observed in 1996 and twice in 1990, resulting in multiple designations before it was determined that these observations were of the same object.
Orbit
This asteroid has a well-established orbit calculated from almost 37 years of observations. Based on the Earth MOID, the closest that this asteroid can possibly come to Earth is over 1 AU, the distance from the Earth to the Sun. The Jupiter Tisserand invariant, used to distinguish different kinds of orbits, is 3.384.