It was discovered on 18 January 1934, by French astronomer Guy Reiss at Algiers Observatory, Algeria, in northern Africa.

[1] The likely stony asteroid with an unknown spectral type has a rotation period of 5.0 hours and measures approximately 14 kilometers (8.7 miles) in diameter.

[2] Mertona is a non-family asteroid of the main belt's background population when applying the hierarchical clustering method to its proper orbital elements.

[4][5] It orbits the Sun in the central main-belt at a distance of 2.3–3.3 AU once every 4 years and 8 months (1,713 days).

[14] In addition, a 2016-published lightcurve, modelling data from the Lowell photometric database, gave a concurring period of 4.97691±0.00001 hours and a spin axis of (73.0°, 35.0°) in ecliptic coordinates (U=n.a.).