6084 Bascom

6084 Bascom (1985 CT) is a binary asteroid belonging to the Phocaea family in the inner main belt. It measures roughly 6.3 kilometers across and was discovered on February 12, 1985, by the husband-and-wife team of Carolyn and Eugene Shoemaker at California's Palomar Observatory.

Naming

The asteroid is named for Florence Bascom, an American geologist who was the second woman in the U.S. to earn a Ph.D. in geology, the first woman hired by the United States Geological Survey, and the first woman elected to the Council of the Geological Society of America. She founded the geology department at Bryn Mawr College and taught there for 33 years, specializing in petrography, mineralogy, crystallography, and geomorphology. The naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on April 11, 1998.

Orbit and classification

Orbit and classification: Bascom is a stony S-type asteroid and a member of the Phocaea family (701). It orbits the Sun at a distance of 1.8–2.9 AU, completing one revolution every 3 years and 6 months (1,286 days). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.24 and an inclination of 23° relative to the ecliptic. A precovery image from Palomar in 1950 extended the observation arc by 30 years before its official discovery.

Diameter

Diameter: Data from NASA's WISE and NEOWISE surveys give Bascom a diameter of 6.17 to 6.347 kilometers, with an albedo of 0.22 to 0.26. The Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link (CALL) adopts Petr Pravec's revised WISE data, yielding an albedo of 0.2091 and a diameter of 6.39 kilometers for an absolute magnitude of 13.29.

Moon and lightcurve

Moon and lightcurve: Between December 29, 2005, and February 2, 2006, astronomers David Higgins (Hunters Hill Observatory, Australia), Petr Pravec, Peter Kušnirák, Lenka Šarounová (Ondřejov Observatory, Czech Republic), and Štefan Gajdoš, Adrián Galád, and Jozef Világi (Modra Observatory, Slovakia) obtained the first rotational lightcurve. It revealed Bascom as a synchronous binary asteroid with a moon orbiting every 43.5 hours. Mutual occultation and eclipsing events, with magnitudes between 0.12 and 0.18, indicate the satellite's diameter is 37±2% of Bascom's, or about 2.3 kilometers. The average absolute magnitude during these observations was 12.8.