1827 Atkinson

ASTEROIDMain-belt asteroid

ILLUSTRATION FROM ALBEDO 0.249 · RADIUS 4.43 KM

[

OVERVIEW

] ASTEROID

1827 Atkinson is a main-belt asteroid. Its absolute magnitude () is 12.32. It orbits the Sun at a mean distance of 2.708 . Its effective radius is 4.43 . It is catalogued as 1827 Atkinson (1962 RK). It was discovered in 1962.

WHAT IT IS
Main-belt asteroid
HOW FAR
2.708

Its average distance from the Sun, not from Earth.

HOW BIG
4.43

The radius of a ball that would look the same size — the body itself is not round.

HOW BRIGHT IN ITSELF (H)

How bright it would look from a fixed, standard distance — a measure of the object rather than of the view from here.

ONE ORBIT TAKES
4.46

One trip round the Sun.

[

OBSERVING

] FROM WHERE YOU ARE

What it takes to see 1827 Atkinson for yourself. Everything in this part of the page is worked out for a real horizon, a real night and the equipment you say you have.

[

CATALOG DATA

] 16 FIELDS

The raw catalogue values, as the source published them, with the error bars where one was published — sorted by what each set of figures is about rather than by the order they happened to be stored in.

WHAT IT IS MADE OF

What the object is in itself, rather than how it happens to look from here.

Rotation period
3.757

HOW BRIGHT IT IS

What the light adds up to, measured through one filter at a time. A magnitude is a brightness on a backwards scale — the smaller the number, the brighter the object.

Albedo

THE ORBIT

The shape of the path, where the object sits on it, and the instant those figures were true of. An orbit is a fit to observations and drifts away from the real one either side of its epoch.

Orbital period
4.463
Eccentricity
Inclination
4.52
Longitude of ascending node
220.42
Argument of perihelion
240.16
Mean anomaly
30.5
Element epoch
2461200.5000
Perihelion passage
2461062.6100
Minimum distance from Earth's orbit
1.24
Orbit class
MBA

WHEN IT WAS FOUND

Who first saw it, from where, and by what method.

Discovered by
Indiana University
Discovered from
Brooklyn
Discovered on
1962-09-07
First observed
1931-10-31
[

ALSO KNOWN AS

] 3 DESIGNATIONS
  • Asteroid 1827
  • Asteroid 1827 Atkinson (1962 RK)
  • Common name Atkinson
[

LOOK IT UP ELSEWHERE

] 1 SERVICE

Each link carries the identifier printed beside it. Nothing on this page is a measurement of our own, so a number that disagrees with one of these is worth reporting — and a service that has never catalogued this object under this name will say so plainly.

  • JPL Small-Body Database1827

    The orbit these elements were taken from, with its uncertainty, its close approaches and every observation behind the fit.

[

CITE THIS PAGE

] DR1

This page is live and its numbers move when an upstream refreshes, so the citation names the release the rows belong to rather than the day you read them. The release itself is frozen, republished as a bundle, and is what a data-availability statement should point at.

PLAIN TEXT
SpaceCatalog. 1827 Atkinson [catalogue entry]. Data release DR1 (2026-08-21). https://spacecatalog.org/object/1827-atkinson
BIBTEX
@misc{spacecatalog_1827-atkinson,
  author       = {{SpaceCatalog}},
  title        = {{1827 Atkinson}},
  howpublished = {SpaceCatalog, data release DR1 (2026-08-21)},
  year         = {2026},
  url          = {https://spacecatalog.org/object/1827-atkinson},
  note         = {Catalogue entry, data release DR1 (2026-08-21). Values from JPL Small-Body Database.}
}

The values above were taken from JPL Small-Body Database — Public domain (NASA/JPL). Citing this page does not replace citing that catalogue.

[

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] 8 LINKED