The Collaboration

Asteroid 2004 BL86 was discovered on Jan. 30, 2004, by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) survey in White Sands, New Mexico. Lightcurve observations made during the days leading up to asteroid’s flyby by Joseph Pollock of Appalachian State University, Boone, North Carolina; Petr Pravec of the Ondrejov Observatory, Czech Republic; and Julian Oey of the Blue Mountains Observatory, Leura, Australia indicated the asteroid was a binary.