It was discovered by American astronomer Edward Bowell at Lowell's Anderson Mesa Station in Flagstaff, Arizona, on 30 January 1982.
[1] The first precovery was obtained at El Leoncito in 1975, extending the asteroid's observation arc by 7 years prior to its discovery.
[6] A rotational lightcurve for this asteroid was obtained from photometric observations made by Japanese astronomer Sunao Hasegawa, using the 1.05-meter Schmidt telescope at Kiso Observatory in March 2004.
[3] This minor planet was named for American cometary astronomer and professor of astronomy at CMNS, Michael A'Hearn (b.
He participated in the space-based EPOXI and IUE mission, which, in 1983, detected for the first time the presence of cometary diatomic sulfur while observing Comet IRAS–Araki–Alcock's spectrum.