Juewa was discovered fromBeijing by the visiting AmericanastronomerJames Craig Watson on 10 October 1874; Watson was in China to observe thetransit of Venus. Watson askedPrince Gong to name the asteroid. Gong's choice was瑞華星 (roughly, "Star ofChina's fortune"). Watson used the first two characters ('star' being redundant), transliterating themJuewa inWade convention of the time. (Inpinyin,瑞華 is transliteratedruìhuá.)[5]
Multichord occultation by 139 Juewa, observed 31 August 2013 from N.S.W., Australia.
Since 1988 there have been 8 reportedstellaroccultations by Juewa. From the occultation on 31 August 2013 the best fit ellipse measures148.3±4.3 km ×142.3±15.6 km.[6]
13-cm radar observations of this asteroid from theArecibo Observatory between 1980 and 1985 were used to produce a diameter estimate of 172 km.[7] Based upon radar data, the near surface solid density of the asteroid is1.5±0.5 g/cm3.[8]
^abcPravec, P.; et al. (May 2012), "Absolute Magnitudes of Asteroids and a Revision of Asteroid Albedo Estimates from WISE Thermal Observations",Asteroids, Comets, Meteors 2012, Proceedings of the conference held May 16–20, 2012 in Niigata, Japan, no. 1667,Bibcode:2012LPICo1667.6089P. See Table 4.