It was discovered on 30 March 1981, by American astronomer Edward Bowell at Lowell's Anderson Mesa Station near Flagstaff, Arizona.
[3] A first precovery was taken at the Palomar Observatory in December 1950, extending the asteroid's observation arc by 31 years prior to its discovery.
His contributions to planetary astronomy also include research on the moons of Pluto and the development of widely used astronomical software.
In September 2012, a rotational lightcurve of Buie was obtained from photometric observations made at the Palomar Transient Factory, California.
According to the survey carried out by the NEOWISE mission of NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, Buie measures 3.4 kilometers in diameter and its surface has an albedo of 0.259,[5][6] while the Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link assumes a standard albedo for stony asteroids of 0.20 and calculates a diameter of 3.92 kilometers using an absolute magnitude of 14.4.