3872 Akirafujii

3872 Akirafujii, provisional designation 1983 AV, is an asteroid from the middle region of the asteroid belt, about 15 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered on 12 January 1983, by American astronomer Brian Skiff at Lowell's Anderson Mesa Station, near Flagstaff, Arizona.

The asteroid is a member of the Eunomia family, a large group of S-type asteroids and the most prominent family in the intermediate main-belt. It orbits the Sun at a distance of 2.1–3.2 AU once every 4 years and 4 months (1,586 days). Its orbit shows an eccentricity of 0.20 and is tilted by 13 degrees to the plane of the ecliptic. It has a rotation period of 22.3 hours and an albedo between 0.03 and 0.09, according to the surveys carried out by the Infrared Astronomical Satellite, IRAS, the Japanese Akari satellite, and the U.S. Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer with its subsequent NEOWISE mission.

The minor planet was named in honour of Akira Fujii (b. 1941), a renowned Japanese astrophotographer from Koriyama. He edited the quarterly magazine Hoshi No Techou (star handbook) and is the author of a beautifully illustrated series of popular astronomy books for young people. Fujii has fostered public awareness of astronomy through television broadcasts from his Chiro Observatory in Shirakawa, Fukushima prefecture, and he toured Japan in 1986, offering the public views of Halley’s Comet with a trailer-mounted 60-cm reflector. Fujii is best known outside of Japan for his stunning celestial photographs, a hallmark of which is technical perfection.

External links

• Asteroid Lightcurve Database (LCDB), query form (info)
• Dictionary of Minor Planet Names, Google books
• Asteroids and comets rotation curves, CdR – Observatoire de Genève, Raoul Behrend
• Discovery Circumstances: Numbered Minor Planets (1)-(5000) – Minor Planet Center
• 3872 Akirafujii at the JPL Small-Body Database

• Discovery · Orbit diagram · Orbital elements · Physical parameters