9983 Rickfienberg

9983 Rickfienberg, provisional designation 1995 DA, is a carbonaceous asteroid from the middle region of the asteroid belt, approximately 10 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered on 19 February 1995, by American astronomer Dennis di Cicco at his private Sudbury Observatory (817), Massachusetts, United States.

The dark C-type asteroid orbits the Sun at a distance of 2.4–3.0 AU once every 4 years and 5 months (1,627 days). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.12 and an inclination of 8° with respect to the ecliptic. The first observation was taken at the Australian Siding Spring Observatory in 1987, extending the asteroid's observation arc by 8 years prior to its discovery.

During the asteroid's opposition in November 2011, a rotational light-curve was obtained from photometric observations at Kitt Peak Observatory. It gave a well-defined rotation period of 7000529629999999999♠5.2963±0.0001 hours with a high brightness variation of 1.3 in magnitude (U=3), typically indicating an non-spheroidal shape. This period was also confirmed by remodeled data from the Lowell photometric database in March 2016.

According to the survey carried out by the NEOWISE mission of NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, the asteroid measures 7.4 kilometers in diameter and its surface has an albedo of 0.17, while the Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link assumes a standard albedo for carbonaceous asteroids of 0.057 and calculates a diameter of 12.2 kilometers, as the lower the body's albedo (reflectivity), the larger its diameter, at a constant absolute magnitude (brightness).

The minor planet was named for Richard Tresch Fienberg (b. 1956) an American astronomer at Rice and Harvard universities, and a stargazer at his private observatory near Danbury, New Hampshire. He is also an editor of the American amateur astronomer magazine Sky & Telescope, after which the minor planet 3243 Skytel is named. Naming citation was published on 1 May 2003 (M.P.C. 48389).