LIGHTCURVE OBSERVATIONS OF (348400) 2005 JF21: AN NEA BINARY.

Abstract

CCD photometric observations were made of the near-Earth asteroid (348400) 2005 JF21 in 2015 June and August. Initial analysis in June did not find any signs of a satellite. Follow-up analysis in August using both data sets found indications that the asteroid was binary with a primary period of 2.41 h and an orbital period for the satellite of about 14.3 h. In mid-August, analysis of radar observations at Goldstone (Naidu et al., 2015) confirmed that the asteroid is a binary.