Asteroid 37655 Illapa


37655 Illapa is an Apollo-class, near-Earth asteroid with an estimated diameter of 1.5 km. It was discovered on August 1, 1994, by C. S. Shoemaker and E. M. Shoemaker at Palomar. The semi-major axis is 1.48 AU, the eccentricity is a very high 0.753 and the inclination is 18.00 degrees.

Asteroid 37655 Illapa, made a close approach to the Earth on August 16, 2003, when it passed within 2.5 million km of the Earth. I observed the asteroid on 5 nights during early August, 2003. The resulting lightcurve was somewhat noisy, however a period of 2.650 hours was determined, which was in close agreement with that of other observers.



Lightcurve results for 37655 Illapa.
Period 2.650 +/- 0.002 hours. Amplitude 0.2 +/- 0.05 magnitude.