Discovery, Observational Data and the Orbit of the Amor Group Asteroid 2010 BT3

Abstract

Abstract A project devoted to astrometric and photometric observations of asteroids at the Molėtai Observatory is described. One of its most important results is the discovery of the asteroid 2010 BT3 belonging to the Amor group of the near-Earth objects. The results of astrometric and photometric observations of the asteroid are presented. The brightness variations of the asteroid are found to be about 0.2 mag in R. The orbit of the asteroid was computed from 96 observations. This orbit, combined with the apparent brightness, gives the absolute magnitude 21.34 mag and the diameter between 160 m and 360 m, taking albedos of S-type and C-type asteroids, respectively.