[3] Öpik orbits the Sun in the inner main-belt at a distance of 1.5–3.1 AU once every 3 years and 6 months (1,277 days).
[1] The first used precovery was taken at the discovering observatory in 1970, extending the asteroid's observation arc by 7 years prior to its discovery.
More recently, it has been characterized as a dark Ch-type, a hydrated subtype of the carbonaceous C-type asteroids in the SMASS classification, which is in agreement with its low albedo (below).
[7] This minor planet was named after Estonian astronomer and astrophysicist, Ernst Öpik (1893–1985), who has influenced many fields of astronomy during his 60-year long career.
He is noted for developing the discipline of statistical celestial mechanics and for methods to estimate the lifetimes of planet-crossing asteroids.