The likely S-type asteroid was discovered on 12 May 1988, by astronomer couple Carolyn and Eugene Shoemaker at the Palomar Observatory in California.

The ejected matter created two dust tails,[14] and the longer one has been estimated at over 800,000 km (500,000 mi) long.

[15] In April 2019, upon analyzing archive images taken in 2013, 2016 and 2017, it was found that Gault had been perpetually active for at least five years before the discovery, with a tail visible when the asteroid was near its furthest distance from the Sun during the 2013 apparition.

[10] This minor planet was named in memory of American planetary geologist Donald Gault (1923–1999), an expert in the field of impact crater forming processes.

Gault conducted field experiments and applied his insight to the interpretation of impact data from the Moon, Earth, Mars and Mercury.

[14] Based on a generic magnitude-to-diameter conversion,[17] the asteroid measures approximately 3.7 kilometers in diameter, for an assumed family-specific albedo of 0.22,[12]: 23  and an absolute magnitude of 14.4.