Asteroid 54896 2001 OP70


54896 2001 OP70 is a main belt asteroid with an estimated diameter of 5 km. It was discovered on July 19, 2001, by LONEOS at Anderson Mesa. The semi-major axis is 2.52 AU, the eccentricity is 0.065 and the inclination is 21.86 degrees.

This asteroid was observed on 3 nights during June 2009 when it was in the field of another asteroid that I was studying. The resulting lightcurve was very noisy and a satisfactory period could not be derived. The lightcurve shown below was the best that could be obtained from the data. More observations are required to confirm or otherwise this result.



Lightcurve results for 54896 2001 OP70.
Period 5.633 +/- 0.009 hours. Amplitude 0.60 +/- 0.2 magnitude.