3402 Wisdom
3402 Wisdom, provisional designation, is a stony asteroid and Mars-crosser on an eccentric orbit from the inner regions of the asteroid belt, approximately in diameter. It was discovered on 5 August 1981, by American astronomer Edward Bowell at Lowell's Anderson Mesa Station near Flagstaff, Arizona, in the United States. The presumed bright S-type asteroid has a rotation period of 4.99 hours. It was named after American planetary scientist Jack Wisdom.
Orbit and classification
Wisdom is a Mars-crossing asteroid, a member of a dynamically unstable group, located between the main belt and the near-Earth populations, and crossing the orbit of Mars at 1.666 AU. It orbits the Sun at a distance of 1.5–2.7 AU once every 3 years and 1 month. Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.28 and an inclination of 5° with respect to the ecliptic.The body's observation arc begins with a precovery taken at Palomar Observatory in February 1977, more than 4 years prior to its official discovery observation at Anderson Mesa.
Physical characteristics
Wisdom is an assumed stony S-type asteroid.Rotation period
In October 2006, two rotational lightcurves of Wisdom were obtained from photometric observations at Ondřejov, Skalnaté pleso and Carbuncle Hill observatories. Lightcurve analysis gave a well-defined rotation period of 4.9949 and 4.9951 hours with a high brightness variation of 0.75 and 0.74 magnitude, respectively. A high brightness amplitude typically indicate that the body has an elongated rather than spherical shape.Diameter and albedo
According to the survey carried out by the NEOWISE mission of NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, Wisdom measures 2.05 and 2.50 kilometers in diameter and its surface has an albedo of 0.32 and 0.283, respectively. The Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link assumes a standard albedo for stony asteroids of 0.20 and derives a diameter of 2.59 kilometers based on an absolute magnitude of 15.34.With a mean diameter of approximately 2.5 kilometers, Wisdom is one of the smaller mid-sized Mars-crossing asteroids. It is assumed that there are up to 10 thousand Mars-crossers larger than 1 kilometer. The largest members of this dynamical group are 132 Aethra, 323 Brucia, 2204 Lyyli and 512 Taurinensis, which measure between 43 and 25 kilometers in diameter.