2433 Sootiyo, provisional designation 1981 GJ, is a stony asteroid from the middle region of the asteroid belt, approximately 13 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered on 5 April 1981, by American astronomer Edward Bowell at Lowell's Anderson Mesa Station near Flagstaff, Arizona.[10] The asteroid was named "Sootiya" meaning "star boy" in the Hopi language.[2]
Sootiyo orbits the Sun in the central main-belt at a distance of 2.0–3.2 AU once every 4 years and 3 months (1,537 days). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.22 and an inclination of 10° with respect to the ecliptic.[1] The first used precovery was taken at Palomar Observatory in 1953, extending the asteroid's observation arc by 28 years prior to its discovery observation.[10]
French amateur astronomer René Roy obtained a rotational lightcurve from photometric observations in October 2007. It gave a rotation periodof7.2298 hours with a brightness variation of 0.54 magnitude (U=2+), superseding observations by Brazilian Cláudia Angeli and by the Spanish ECLA project, which both gave a period of 7 hours with an amplitude of 0.57 and 0.4 magnitude, respectively (U=1/2).[7][a]
According to the survey carried out by the Japanese Akari satellite, the asteroid measures 14.9 kilometers in diameter and its surface has an albedo of 0.156,[6] while two different data sets from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer with its subsequent NEOWISE mission give a diameter of 12.1 and 12.9 kilometers with an albedo of 0.269 and 0.304, respectively.[4][5]
The Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link agrees with the results obtained by Akari, assuming a standard albedo for stony asteroids of 0.20 and calculating a diameter of 14.9 kilometers with an absolute magnitude of 11.5.[3]
This minor planet is named "Sootiya" which means "star boy" in the language of the Hopi Tribe of northern Arizona. Correspondingly, the Vestian asteroid 2432 Soomana stands for "star girl".[2] Naming citation was proposed by Michael Lomatewama and Ekkehart Malotki and published on 8 February 1982 (M.P.C. 6650).[11]
