3688 Navajo
3688 Navajo, provisional designation, is a Griqua asteroid and a 2:1 Jupiter librator on an eccentric, cometary-like orbit from the outermost regions of the asteroid belt, approximately in diameter. It was discovered on 30 March 1981, by American astronomer Edward Bowell at the Anderson Mesa Station near Flagstaff, Arizona. The dark P-type asteroid was named for the Native American Navajo people.
Orbit and classification
Navajo is an asteroid in a cometary orbit, with no observable coma but with a Tisserand's parameter just below the defined the threshold of 3.0. ACO's may be extinct comets. It is a member of the small dynamical Griqua group, a marginally unstable group of asteroids observed in the Hecuba gap, a 2:1 resonant zone with the gas giant Jupiter. The group is named after its largest member, 1362 Griqua.Navajo is a non-family asteroid from the main belt's background population. It orbits the Sun in the outermost asteroid belt at a distance of 1.7–4.8 AU once every 5 years and 9 months. Its orbit has a high eccentricity of 0.48 and an inclination of 3° with respect to the ecliptic. The body's observation arc begins with a precovery taken at Siding Spring Observatory, just weeks before its official discovery observation at Anderson Mesa.