(4197) 1982 TA was discovered on October 11, 1982 by Eleanor F. Helin and Eugene Shoemaker. It is an Apollo, Mars- and Venus-crosser asteroid, only 1.7 km in diameter.

In 1996, astronomers at the Goldstone Observatory analysed it using radar delay-Doppler imaging . The resultant images are not very clear, but they show that (4197) 1982 TA has a roughly triangular shape, and a 3-hour rotation period.