(7812) Billward Main-belt Asteroid
Discovered on 26 October 1984 by E. Bowell at Anderson Mesa.
Named in honor of William R. Ward (b. 1943), an accomplished theoretician who specializes in dynamics and celestial mechanics. Ward has made fundamental contributions to a wide variety of topics in modern planetary science, including both solar nebula and circumplanetary disk dynamics, the origin of the moon, planetesimal formation, planetary ring dynamics, and martian obliquity variations and their coupling to planetwide climatological change. Ward has spent most of his career at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Southwest Research Institute, Boulder. Both his talents and his good spirits are enjoyed by colleagues around the world. Name proposed and citation written by S. A. Stern.Naming citation (19990728/MPCPages.arc), IAU / Minor Planet Center, via NASA/JPL
Where Billward is today
Seen from above the solar system on 2026-10-14: Billward is 2.17 au from the Sun and 1.52 au from Earth. Computed from JPL's orbital elements.
Facts
| Number | 7812 |
| Provisional designation | 1984 UT |
| Orbit class | Main-belt Asteroid |
| Diameter | 16.9 km (#2,701 largest of 17,440 named asteroids with a measured size) |
| Albedo | 0.0560 |
| Absolute magnitude (H) | 12.88 |
| Orbital period | 4.65 years |
| Semi-major axis | 2.79 au |
| Perihelion – aphelion | 2.16 – 3.42 au |
| Eccentricity | 0.226 |
| Inclination | 16.1° |
| Closest distance between its orbit and Earth's (MOID) | 1.18 au |
Data: NASA/JPL Small-Body Database and the IAU Minor Planet Center.
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