It was discovered on 29 October 1964, by American astronomer Elizabeth Roemer at the Flagstaff station (NOFS) of the United States Naval Observatory (USNO).

Lucifer orbits the Sun in the outer main-belt at a distance of 2.5–3.3 AU once every 4 years and 11 months (1,802 days).

[4][5][6][7][8][9] The Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link derives an albedo of 0.0886 and calculates a diameter of 26.90 kilometers based on an absolute magnitude of 11.1.

[3] In October 2003, a rotational lightcurve of Lucifer was obtained from photometric observations by American astronomer Brian Warner at his Palmer Divide Observatory in Colorado.

[12] In January 2005, observations by astronomer Horacio Correia gave a concurring period of 13.054 hours and an amplitude of 0.22 magnitude (U=3).