It was discovered on 16 January 1988, by Japanese amateur astronomer Takuo Kojima at the YGCO Chiyoda Station in the Kantō region of Japan.
[1] In January 2010, a rotational lightcurve of 1988 BC was obtained from photometric observations by Pierre Antonini at the Bédoin Observatory (132) in southeastern France.
Lightcurve analysis gave a rotation period of 6.539±0.005 hours with a brightness variation of 0.30 in magnitude (U=3).
[10] A previous 2006-observation by American astronomer Brian Warner at his Palmer Divide Observatory in Colorado gave a period of 6.510 hours and an amplitude of 0.24 magnitude (U=3-).
[6][7][8] Despite the results from the space-based observations, the Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link assumes a higher albedo of 0.10 – a compromise between the stony and carbonaceous asteroid populations from the inner and outer main-belt, respectively – and hence calculates a smaller diameter of 12.1 kilometers with an absolute magnitude of 12.7.