7977

ASTEROIDAmor near-Earth asteroid

ILLUSTRATION FROM SMASS TYPE S

[

OVERVIEW

] ASTEROID

7977 is an Amor near-Earth asteroid. Its absolute magnitude () is 15.15. It orbits the Sun at a mean distance of 2.226 . It is catalogued as 7977 (1977 QQ5). It was discovered in 1977.

WHAT IT IS
Amor near-Earth asteroid
HOW FAR
2.226

Its average distance from the Sun, not from Earth.

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
3.31

One trip round the Sun.

[

OBSERVING

] FROM WHERE YOU ARE

What it takes to see 7977 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 KIND OF THING IT IS

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

Spectral type (SMASS II)
S
Rotation period
7.456

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
3.313
Eccentricity
Inclination
25.17
Longitude of ascending node
134.12
Argument of perihelion
248.1
Mean anomaly
231.47
Element epoch
2461200.5000
Perihelion passage
2461633.5400
Minimum distance from Earth's orbit
0.356
Orbit class
AMO

WHEN IT WAS FOUND

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

Discovered by
McNaught, R. H.
Discovered from
Siding Spring
Discovered on
1977-08-21
First observed
1955-03-23
[

ALSO KNOWN AS

] 2 DESIGNATIONS
  • Asteroid 7977
  • Asteroid 7977 (1977 QQ5)
[

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 Database7977

    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. 7977 [catalogue entry]. Data release DR1 (2026-08-21). https://spacecatalog.org/object/7977
BIBTEX
@misc{spacecatalog_7977,
  author       = {{SpaceCatalog}},
  title        = {{7977}},
  howpublished = {SpaceCatalog, data release DR1 (2026-08-21)},
  year         = {2026},
  url          = {https://spacecatalog.org/object/7977},
  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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