2927 Alamosa

2927 Alamosa, provisional designation, is a stony background asteroid from the central region of the asteroid belt, approximately in diameter. The asteroid was discovered on 5 October 1981, by American astronomer Norman Thomas at Lowell's Anderson Mesa Station in Flagstaff, Arizona. The S-type asteroid has a rotation period of 4.4 hours. It was named after the U.S. town of Alamosa in Colorado.

Orbit and classification

Alamosa is a non-family asteroid from the main belt's background population. It orbits the Sun in the central asteroid belt at a distance of 2.1–3.0 AU once every 4.03 years. Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.17 and an inclination of 17° with respect to the ecliptic. It was first identified as at Heidelberg Observatory in 1936, extending the asteroid's observation arc by 45 years prior to its official discovery observation at Anderson Mesa.

This minor planet was named after the U.S. town of Alamosa, Colorado, located in the San Luis Valley on the upper Rio Grande. The town is the birthplace of the discovering astronomer, Norman Thomas. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 20 December 1983. Almosa is Spanish for cottonwood tree.

Alamosa has been characterized as a common S-type asteroid by Pan-STARRS survey, the Small Solar System Objects Spectroscopic Survey, as well as in the SDSS-based taxonomy. In the SMASS-like variant of the S3OS2 taxonomy, Alamosa is a K-type asteroid.
In April and May 2012, a rotational lightcurve was obtained from photometric observations made at the Phillips Academy Observatory. Lightcurve analysis gave a well-defined rotation period of hours with a brightness variation of 0.26 in magnitude. The Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link assumes a standard albedo for stony asteroids of 0.20 and calculates a diameter of 11.8 kilometers with an absolute magnitude of 12.0.