[2][9] Bessel is a stony asteroid and a member of the Eos family that orbits the Sun in the outer main-belt at a distance of 2.7–3.3 AU once every 5 years and 3 months (1,909 days).

[9] This minor planet was named after German astronomer Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel (1789–1846), who measured the first stellar parallax in 1838.

[11] In March 2011, a rotational lightcurve of Bessel was obtained from photometric observations by Italian amateur astronomer Silvano Casulli.

[7] In 2016, a modeled lightcurve using photometric data from various sources gave a concurring period of 8.96318 hours, as well as a spin axis of (61.0°, −50.0°) in ecliptic coordinates (λ, β).

[4][5][6] The Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link derives an albedo of 0.1448 and a diameter of 18.33 kilometers with an absolute magnitude of 11.4.