It was discovered on 7 November 1986, by Belgian astronomer Eric Elst at the Haute-Provence Observatory in Saint-Michel-l'Observatoire near Marseille, southeastern France.
[1] The assumed C-type asteroid belongs to the 40 largest Jupiter trojans and has a longer-than-average rotation period of 28.72 hours.
[5] In September 1994, photometric observations of Ulysses were made by astronomers Stefano Mottola and Uri Carsenty at ESO's La Silla Observatory, Chile, using the Bochum 0.61-metre Telescope.
The observations were used to build a lightcurve showing a well-defined rotation period of 28.72 hours with a brightness variation of 0.32 magnitude (U=3).
[11] In March 2014, another rotational lightcurve was obtained in the R-band by astronomers at the Palomar Transient Factory, California, which gave a concurring period of 28.7840 hours with an amplitude of 0.33 magnitude (U=2).
[8][9][10] The Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link derives an albedo of 0.0608 and a diameter of 77.93 kilometers based on an absolute magnitude of 9.2.