1956 Artek

1956 Artek, provisional designation, is a dark Themistian asteroid from the outer regions of the asteroid belt, approximately 19 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered on 8 October 1969, by Soviet–Russian astronomer Lyudmila Chernykh at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory in Nauchnyj. It was named after Artek, a Soviet Young Pioneer camp.

Orbit and classification
Artek is a dark C-type asteroid and a member of the Themis family, a dynamical family of outer-belt asteroids with nearly coplanar ecliptical orbits. It orbits the Sun in the outer main-belt at a distance of 2.9–3.5 AU once every 5 years and 9 months (2,094 days). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.10 and an inclination of 1° with respect to the ecliptic. The first precovery was taken at Goethe Link Observatory in 1954, extending the asteroid's observation arc by 15 years prior to its discovery.

Physical characteristics
A rotational lightcurve was obtained from photometric observations made by Italian astronomers Roberto Crippa and Federico Manzini in February 2006. The fragmentary lightcurve gave a rotation period of $17.97$ hours with a low brightness variation of 0.07 magnitude (U=1+).

According to the space-based surveys carried out by the Japanese Akari satellite and NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, the asteroid measures 18.0 and 19.2 kilometers in diameter with a corresponding albedo of 0.099 of 0.074, respectively. The Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link assumes an albedo of 0.08 and calculates a diameter of 18.7 kilometers with an absolute magnitude of 12.1.

Naming
This minor planet was named after the Soviet Artek (Арте́к) camp, the first All-Union Young Pioneer camp on the Crimean peninsula. The official was published by the Minor Planet Center on 30 June 1977 (M.P.C. 4190).