It was discovered on 22 January 1983, by American astronomer Edward Bowell at Lowell's Anderson Mesa Station in Flagstaff, Arizona, United States.
[5][6][7][8] The Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link adopts Pravec's revised WISE-data and takes an albedo of 0.1558, a diameter of 6.75 kilometers and an absolute magnitude of 13.49.
[3][9] In December 2007, two rotational lightcurves of Huntress were independently obtained by astronomers Petr Pravec and Donald Pray.
[a][4] In March 2012, Australian astronomer David Higgins obtained a concurring lightcurve with period of 2.44 hours and an amplitude of 0.11 magnitude (U=2).
This minor planet was named in honor of American astrochemist and space scientist Wesley Huntress (born 1942), who has been NASA's director of space science programs in the 1990s, and has pioneered research relevant to the chemical evolution of interstellar clouds, comets and planetary atmospheres.