It was discovered on 27 September 1987, by American astronomer couple Carolyn and Eugene Shoemaker at the U.S. Palomar Observatory in California.
[3] In September 2015, a rotational lightcurve of Raup was obtained from photometric observations by American astronomer Brian Warner at his Palmer Divide Station in Colorado.
Brian Warner's 2015-observation supersedes a previously obtained lightcurve that gave a significantly shorter period of 560±25 hours with an amplitude of 1.05 magnitude (U=2).
[6] According to the survey carried out by the NEOWISE mission of NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, Raup measures 4.8 kilometers in diameter and its surface has a high albedo of 0.329,[5] while the Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link assumes a standard albedo for Hungaria asteroids of 0.30, and calculates a diameter of 4.6 kilometers, based on an absolute magnitude of 13.6.
[4] This minor planet was named in honor of American David M. Raup (1933–2015), paleontologist and expert of the fossil record at UChicago.