X-Nico

8 unusual facts about asteroid


Alexander Vampilov

Asteroid 3230 Vampilov, discovered in 1972, is apparently named after him.

Arnold Berliner

Asteroid 1018 Arnolda, discovered as 1924 QM on March 3, 1924, in Heidelberg Observatory by Karl Wilhelm Reinmuth is named in his honor.

Red Barn Observatory

The observatory is located in Ty Ty, Georgia, USA - well away from any city light pollution and is in an excellent location to perform the follow-up observations of Near-Earth objects and Potentially Hazardous Asteroids that are near the vicinity of Earth on a regular basis.

Sergei Lemeshev

Asteroid number 4561 received the name Lemeshev in 1978, a year after Sergei Lemeshev's death.

The Hybrid Front

Asteroids tend to interfere with both combat and movement during extraterrestrial missions.

The Little Prince and the Aviator

Based on the classic book by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the musical deviates from the original in that aviator Toni, whose plane crashes in the Sahara Desert, explicitly is real-life author Saint-Exupéry, and the plot alternates flashbacks to actual events in his life with his interaction with the fictional Little Prince, a refugee from Asteroid B6-12.

Wise Observatory

! colspan="3" style="white-space: nowrap;" "?title=Asteroid">Asteroids discovered : 25

Yevgeniya Rudneva

The Asteroid 1907 Rudneva, a school in Kerch, streets in Berdyansk, Kerch, Moscow and Saltykovka were named after her.


120 Lachesis

Photometric observations of this asteroid were made in early 2009 at the Organ Mesa Observatory in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

171 Ophelia

A 1979 study of the Algol-like light curve produced by this asteroid concluded that it was possible to model the brightness variation by assuming a binary system with a circular orbit, a period of 13.146 hours, and an inclination of 15° to the line of sight from the Earth.

18091 Iranmanesh

18091 Iranmanesh (2000 JN58) is a main-belt asteroid discovered on May 6, 2000 by the Lincoln Laboratory Near-Earth Asteroid Research Team at Socorro.

18610 Arthurdent

25924 Douglasadams, an asteroid named after the character's creator.

200 Dynamene

Photometric observations of this asteroid at the Organ Mesa Observatory in Las Cruces, New Mexico in 2011 gave a light curve with a period of 37.394 ± 0.002 hours and a brightness variation of 0.10 ± 0.01 in magnitude.

2010 KQ

It was given the asteroid designation 2010 KQ by the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who identified its orbit as being very similar to that of the Earth.

2048

June - Asteroid 2007 VK184 has a chance of 1 in 3,030 of hitting Earth in this year.

21540 Itthipanyanan

The asteroid is named for Thai student Suksun Itthipanyanan due to his second place finish at the 2006 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair with his experiment on the 'Dehiscence and dispersion of the popping pod Ruellia tuberosa L.' His second place finish allowed his group to be recognized by Intel ISEF for an outstanding interdisciplinary science project, winning the naming rights for the asteroid.

28242 Mingantu

The asteroid was named after Minggatu, a Qing era mathematician and astronomer of Mongol ethnicity, who is credited with originally discovering Catalan numbers.

30441 Curly

The asteroid is named after the comedian and member of the Three Stooges, Curly Howard.

3161 Beadell

The asteroid was named by Carolyn Shoemaker in recognition of Len Beadell an Australian surveyor, whose network of roads in outback Australia enabled Carolyn and husband Eugene to visit meteorite impact craters during the early 1980s.

4206 Verulamium

The asteroid was discovered on August 25, 1986, and is named after the Celtic and later Roman town of Verulamium, near what is now the city of St Albans, in Hertfordshire, southern England.

6123 Aristoteles

The asteroid was named in honor of the Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle.

65 Cybele

Tempel had awarded the honour of naming the asteroid to Carl August von Steinheil in recognition of his achievements in telescope production.

73079 Davidbaltimore

The asteroid was named after David Baltimore (b. 1938), renowned for his Nobel Prize-winning biological research and for his vision and leadership as the seventh president of the California Institute of Technology (1997–2006).

8331 Dawkins

The asteroid is named after the famous biologist, professor and author Richard Dawkins.

8832 Altenrath

The asteroid is named in memory of Henricus Altenrath (1832–1892), initiator and first director of the "Nijverheidsschool" a well-known Antwerp school for teaching of technical professions.

Aristarkh Belopolsky

The crater Belopol'skiy on the Moon, the asteroid 1004 Belopolskya and an award of the Russian Academy of Sciences are named after him.

Berenice II of Egypt

The asteroid 653 Berenike, discovered in 1907, is also named after Queen Berenice.

Bolide

For example, the Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center of the USGS uses bolide as a generic term that describes any large crater-forming impacting body of which its composition (for example, whether it is a rocky or metallic asteroid, or an icy comet) is unknown.

Carl Gustav Witt

He discovered two asteroids, most notably 433 Eros, the first known asteroid with an unusual orbit occasionally approaching the Earth's (today it is classified as an Amor asteroid).

Carolyn Hurless

In 1981, an asteroid was discovered by Brian Skiff and was named, 3434 Hurless, in her honor.

Christabel

2695 Christabel (1979 UE), a main-belt asteroid discovered in 1979

Dembowski

349 Dembowska, a main belt asteroid named after Ercole Dembowski (Dembowska is the feminine form of this surname)

Edward C. T. Chao

He was a recipient of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Senior U.S. Scientist Award, and had an asteroid named for him, 3906 Chao.

Ferdinand Runk

The asteroid 4662 Runk was named by Czech astronomer Jana Tichá after Ferdinand Runk, as Runk had in 1830 painted a panoramic watercolor of the view from Kleť (1038 meters), the location of the Kleť Observatory.

Frank K. Edmondson

Nearly 7000 photographic plates for asteroid orbit studies were taken with a 10-inch astrographic camera at the Goethe Link Observatory.

Gösta Gahm

10997 Gahm, a main-belt asteroid discovered on 2 September 1978, is named in honor of Gahm.

Grumiaux

4571 Grumiaux (1985 RY3), a Main-belt Asteroid discovered in 1985

Irwin I. Shapiro

In 1981, Edward Bowell discovered the 3832 main belt asteroid and it was later named after Shapiro by his former student Steven J. Ostro.

John J. Kavelaars

The asteroid 154660 Kavelaars was named in his honour on 1 June 2007 by his colleague David D. Balam.

Kapitsa

3437 Kapitsa (1982 UZ5) - main-belt asteroid discovered in 1982 by L. G. Karachkina, named after Pyotr Kapitsa

Leucocephala

8971 Leucocephala, a Main-belt asteroid discovered on September 29, 1973

Malcolm Hartley

The asteroid 4768 Hartley (1988 PH1) was named in his honour, being deputy astronomer of the U.K. Schmidt telescope at Siding Spring, with which this minor planet was discovered.

Markree Observatory

In 1878, Cooper’s assistant, Andrew Graham, discovered the asteroid 9 Metis with the Comet Seeker.

Matossian

22776 Matossian, full name 22776 Matossian (1999 CS24), main-belt asteroid discovered on February 10, 1999

Modra Observatory

The asteroid 11118 Modra discovered at this observatory is named in the honor of the town.

Moriz von Kuffner

In 2006 the main-belt asteroid 12568 Kuffner was named in honor of Moriz von Kuffner's sponsorship of astronomy.

Musashimurayama East High School

In 1994, Masanori Hirasawa, a teacher at the school, found an asteroid orbiting between Mars and Jupiter (1994WQ12) and named it 7892 Musamurahigashi, after the school name.

Nyrölä Observatory

Discoveries: asteroid 22978 Nyrölä that was the first asteroid discovered by Finnish amateur astronomers, Harri Hyvönen, Marko Moilanen and Arto Oksanen.

OSIRIS-REx

The mission is planned for a 2016 launch and will study and return a sample of asteroid 101955 Bennu (formerly designated 1999 RQ36), a carbonaceous asteroid, to Earth for detailed analyses in 2023.

Schoof

17958 Schoof (1999 JE33), a Main-belt Asteroid discovered in 1999

SciLands

Founded in 1977 by Dr. Gerard K. O'Neill, Gerard O'Neill, Princeton University professor and author of The High Frontier, SSI sponsored and conducted research into areas such as solar power satellites, lunar bases, space colonies, asteroid mining, and mass drivers.

Tricomi

31189 Tricomi (1997 YZ7) Tricomi (asteroid 31189), Main-belt Asteroid

Tycus

The film relied heavily on stock footage, recycling shots from Dante's Peak, Asteroid, and Air America amongst several films.

Večerníček

Asteroid 33377 Večerníček, discovered by Petr Pravec at Ondřejov Observatory on 12 February 1999, was named after the animated boy.

Volcanism

Movement of molten rock in the mantle, caused by thermal convection currents, coupled with gravitational effects of changes on the earth's surface (erosion, deposition, even asteroid impact and patterns of post-glacial rebound) drive plate tectonic motion and ultimately volcanism.

William F. Bottke

In 2007, Bottke published a paper in Nature (with David Vokrouhlicky and David Nesvorny), proposing that the asteroid that produced the Chicxulub Crater and caused the Cretaceous mass extinction (although the latter is still contended) formed during an asteroid breakup in the main asteroid belt approximately 160 million years ago.


see also