3800 Karayusuf
3800 Karayusuf, provisional designation , is a Mars-crossing asteroid and suspected binary system from inside the asteroid belt, approximately in diameter. It was discovered on 4 January 1984, by American astronomer Eleanor Helin at the Palomar Observatory in California. The S/L-type asteroid has a short rotation period of 2.2 hours. It was named after Syrian physician Alford Karayusuf, a friend of the discoverer.
Orbit and classification
Karayusuf is a Mars-crossing asteroid, a dynamically unstable group between the main-belt and the near-Earth populations, crossing the orbit of Mars at 1.66 AU. It orbits the Sun at a distance of 1.46–1.70 AU once every 2 years. Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.08 and an inclination of 15° with respect to the ecliptic. On 11 June 1938, Karayusuf passed from Mars.The body's observation arc begins with its first observations as at Crimea–Nauchnij in December 1975, almost 12 years prior to its official discovery observation at Palomar.
Naming
This minor planet was named after Syrian physician Alford Karayusuf, a supporter of the Near-earth asteroid research projects at JPL and a leader of the World Space Foundation's program of Solar System exploration. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 2 November 1990. The main-belt asteroid 5255 Johnsophie, also discovered by Helin, was named after Alford Karayusuf's children, John and Sophie .Physical characteristics
In the SMASS classification, Karayusuf is a common, stony S-type asteroid. The asteroid has also been characterized as an L-type asteroid by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and Pan-STARRS photometric survey.Rotation period
In March 2008, a rotational lightcurve of Karayusuf was obtained from photometric observations by Brian Warner at his Palmer Divide Observatory in Colorado. Lightcurve analysis gave a well-defined rotation period of hours with a rather small brightness amplitude of 0.15 magnitude. The body's rotation is close to the threshold-period of that of a fast rotator, which would fly apart if they were not composed of a solid, monolithic structure.Follow-up observations by Warner in 2010, 2014 and 2018 gave similar results. The asteroid was also observed by Brian Skiff and William Ryan in 2018.