[10] The asteroid was named for Neil deGrasse Tyson, American astrophysicist and popular science communicator.
[1] The first precovery was taken at Palomar's Digitized Sky Survey (DSS) in 1953, extending the asteroid's observation arc by 41 years prior to its discovery.
[5][a] A previous photometric observation in August 2009, at the Oakley Southern Sky Observatory, Australia, gave a lightcurve with a similar period of 3.329 hours and a brightness variation of 0.35 magnitude (U=3-).
[5][6][a] According to the survey carried out by NASA's space-based Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer with its subsequent NEOWISE mission, the asteroid measures 10.9 kilometers in diameter and its surface has an albedo of 0.197,[7] while the Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link assumes an albedo of 0.23 and calculates a smaller diameter of 8.2 kilometers with an absolute magnitude of 12.64.
[3] This minor planet was named in honor of American astrophysicist and popular science communicator, Neil deGrasse Tyson (born 1958).