Parsec is asteoid #30857 and also known as 1991 YY. Parsec measures 2.8 km in diameter. Parsec’s orbit is characterized by a semi-major axis of 2.22 Astronomical Units, an eccentricity of 0.16, a period of revolution of 1’205 days, and an inclination of 3.5 degrees. Parsec was discovered by the Belgian astronomer Eric Walter Elst at the Haute-Provence Observatory (Observatoire de Haute-Provence).

Parsec is named after the parsec (pc), a unit of length, which is used for measuring astronomical distances. A parsec is defined as the distance at which one Astronomical Unit (AU) subtends an angle of one arcsecond (a second of angle or one three-thousand-six-hundredth of a degree). The word parsec is made from the words parallax and second and was coined in 1913 by the British astronomer Herbert Hall Turner. One parsec equals 3.26 light-years (by the way, the light-year isn’t an astronomical measurement unit and many astronomers love to calculate in centimeters for the sake of making numbers astronomical) or 206’265 AU or 30’856.7758 × 10¹² m. The name parsec was chosen for this asteroid because its asteroid number gives 1 pc in Tera-meters.

Because the asteroid’s name Parsec got derived from the asteroid number, so Parsec counts to the playful names, that are encouraged by the IAU. But despite the name denoting a certain distance, it has nothing to do with the orbital parameters of an asteroid. It would really be inconvenient and misleading to give the diameter or the semi-major axis or anything else, which has something to do with an asteroid, in parsec. So Parsec presides over misleading numbers. They can be misleading due to difficulties in calculating or due to difficulties in interpreting them.