It was discovered on 11 November 1990, by Japanese amateur astronomers Kin Endate and Kazuro Watanabe at the Kitami Observatory on the northern island of Hokkaidō, Japan.
[11] On 14 May 2021, the object was named by the Working Group for Small Bodies Nomenclature (WGSBN), after Axius, a river god from Greek mythology, who is the son of Oceanus and Tethys, the father of Pelegon and grandfather of Asteropaios.
[2] In both the Tholen- and SMASS-like taxonomy of the Small Solar System Objects Spectroscopic Survey (S3OS2), Axius is a dark D-type asteroid, the dominant spectral type among the larger Jupiter trojans.
[7][13] In June 2006, photometric observations over eight nights were made by Italian astronomer Stefano Mottola at the Calar Alto Observatory in Spain.
Lightcurve analysis gave a rotation period of 37.56±0.05 hours with a brightness amplitude of 0.20 magnitude (U=3-), superseding Manzini's previous result.