181 Eucharis is a large, slowly rotating main-belt asteroid that was discovered by French astronomer Pablo Cottenot on February 2, 1878, from Marseille Observatory. It was his only asteroid discovery. This object was named after Eucharis, a nymph from the 17th-century novel Les Aventures de Télémaque. It is orbiting the Sun at a distance of with a moderate eccentricity of 0.20 and an orbital period of 5.54 years.
In the Tholen classification system, it is categorized as a stony S-type asteroid, while the Bus asteroid taxonomy system lists it as an Xk asteroid. Photometric observations of this asteroid at the Goat Mountain Astronomical Research Station in Rancho Cucamonga, California during 2007 gave a light curve with a leisurely rotation period of 52.23 ñ 0.05 hours. Based on infrared measurements, it has a diameter of .
This object is the namesake of a family of 149âÂÂ778 asteroids that share similar spectral properties and orbital elements; hence they may have arisen from the same collisional event. All members have a relatively high orbital inclination. In the case of 181 Eucharis, the orbital plane is inclined at an angle of 18.9ð to the plane of the ecliptic.