The asteroid was discovered by Hungarian astronomer György Kulin at the Konkoly Observatory, Budapest, on 12 November 1936.
[2] Ortutay orbits the Sun in the outer main-belt at a distance of 2.8–3.5 AU once every 5 years and 6 months (1,999 days).
[3] In December 2013, a rotational lightcurve of Ortutay was obtained from photometric observations by astronomer Kim Lang at the Klokkerholm Observatory in Denmark.
Lightcurve analysis gave a rotation period of 7.7475 hours with a brightness variation of 0.44 magnitude (U=3-).
[4][5][6][7][8] The Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link derives an albedo of 0.0423 and a diameter of 44.69 kilometers based on an absolute magnitude of 10.8.