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1955 McMath

asteroid

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 6, 2026
Entity authorityQ753710
Source-derived summary

1955 McMath, provisional designation 1963 SR, is a stony Koronis asteroid from the outer region of the asteroid belt, approximately 10 kilometers in diameter.

It was discovered on 22 September 1963, by Indiana University's Indiana Asteroid Program at its Goethe Link Observatory near Brooklyn, Indiana, United States. It was later named after solar astronomer Robert Raynolds McMath.

Orbit and classification

McMath is a stony S-type asteroid and a member of the Koronis family, which is named after 158 Koronis and consists of about 300 known bodies. It orbits the Sun in the outer main-belt at a distance of 2.7–3.0 AU once every 4 years and 10 months (1,762 days). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.06 and an inclination of 1° with respect to the ecliptic. The first precovery was taken at Goethe Link Observatory in 1949, extending the asteroid's observation arc by 15 years prior to its discovery. The first (unused) observation at Uccle Observatory dates back to 1936.

Physical characteristics

Rotation period

It has a well determined rotation period of 5.574±0.002 hours with a brightness amplitude of 0.30 in magnitude (U=3). Between 2011 and 2013, three additional lightcurves with concurring periods of McMath with an amplitude between 0.32 and 0.39 magnitude were obtained through photometric observations in the R- and S-band at the U.S. Palomar Transient Factory in California (U=2/3-/2).

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “1955 McMath” is asteroid. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through McMath and asteroid, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1955, 1963, 1949, 1936—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, McMath and asteroid is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “asteroid” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q753710. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1955, 1963, 1949 and 1936.

Critical limits

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from 1955 McMath” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.