7225 Huntress

Classification and orbit

Huntress is a member of the Flora family, one of the largest families of stony asteroids. It orbits the Sun in the inner main-belt at a distance of 1.9–2.8 AU once every 3 years and 7 months (1,308 days). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.20 and an inclination of 7° with respect to the ecliptic. The first precovery was taken at Palomar in 1960, extending the body's observation arc by 23 years prior to its official discovery observation at Flagstaff.

According to the survey carried out by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer with its subsequent NEOWISE mission, Huntress measures between 5.94 and 6.680 kilometers in diameter and its surface has an albedo between 0.165 and 0.27. The Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link adopts Pravec's revised WISE-data and takes an albedo of 0.1558, a diameter of 6.75 kilometers and an absolute magnitude of 13.49.

Moon and lightcurve

In December 2007, two rotational lightcurves of Huntress were independently obtained by astronomers Petr Pravec and Donald Pray. Lightcurve analysis gave a rotation period of 2.43995 and 2.4400 hours, respectively. The body's low brightness amplitude of 0.11 magnitude suggest a nearly spheroidal shape (). During the photometric observations, it was revealed, that Huntress is a synchronous binary asteroid with an asteroid moon orbiting it every 14.67 hours. The moon's diameter was estimated to be 21% of that of Huntress (or 1.3 kilometers assuming a primary diameter of 6 km).

In March 2012, Australian astronomer David Higgins obtained a concurring lightcurve with period of 2.44 hours and an amplitude of 0.11 magnitude (). For an asteroid of its size, Huntress has a relatively short spin rate, not much above the 2.2-hour threshold for fast rotators.

Naming

This minor planet was named in honor of American astrochemist and space scientist Wesley Huntress (born 1942), who has been NASA's director of space science programs in the 1990s, and has pioneered research relevant to the chemical evolution of interstellar clouds, comets and planetary atmospheres. Naming citation was proposed by the discoverer and published on 8 August 1998 (M.P.C. 32348).

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