[2] Newcombia is a non-family asteroid of the main belt's background population when applying the hierarchical clustering method to its proper orbital elements.
[1] This minor planet was named after Simon Newcomb (1835–1909), a Canadian–American professor of astronomy and director of the U.S. Nautical Almanac Office at the United States Naval Observatory.
[11] In October 2004, a rotational lightcurve of Newcombia was obtained from photometric observations by American amateur astronomer Walter R. Cooney Jr. in collaboration with John Gross, Dirk Terrell, Vishnu Reddy and Ron Dyvig.
[10][14] An identical period of 3.003±0.001 hours with an amplitude of 0.33±0.02 magnitude was determined in April 2014, by Daniel Klinglesmith and colleagues at the Etscorn Observatory (719) in New Mexico (U=3).
[15][16] Two more lightcurves by Robert Stephens at the Center for Solar System Studies (U81) gave a period of 3.002±0.001 and 3.004±0.001 hours with a brightness variation of 0.41±0.02 and 0.4±0.02 magnitude in March 2014 and September 2019, respectively (U=3/3).