Dictionary of Minor Planet Names — Addendum 2012–2014

(21) Lutetia at closest approach

Image of (21) Lutetia captured by Rosetta on July, 10 2010

Asteroid (21) Lutetia has been revealed as a battered world of many craters. ESA’s Rosetta mission has returned the first close-up images of the asteroid showing it is most probably a primitive survivor from the violent birth of the Solar System.

The flyby was a spectacular success with Rosetta performing faultlessly. Closest approach took place at 18:10 CEST, at a distance of 3162 km.

The images show that (21) Lutetia is heavily cratered, having suffered many impacts during its 4.5 billion years of existence. As Rosetta drew close, a giant bowl-shaped depression stretching across much of the asteroid rotated into view. The images confirm that (21) Lutetia is an elongated body, with its longest side around 130km.

The pictures come from Rosetta’s OSIRIS instrument, which combines a wide angle and a narrow angle camera.

At closest approach, details down to a scale of 60 m can be seen over the entire surface of (21) Lutetia.

Image credit: ESA 2010 MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/RSSD/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA Id 22 4598 Released 10/07/2010 11:20 pm Internet: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Rosetta/Rosetta_triumphs_at_asteroid_LutetiaImage: http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2010/07/Lutetia_at_closest_approach

Lutz D. Schmadel

Prepared on Behalf of Commission 20 Under the Auspices of the International Astronomical Union

Addendum to Sixth Edition: 2012–2014

DictionaryofMinor Planet Names

ISBN 978-3-319-17676-5 ISBN 978-3-319-17677-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-17677-2 Library of Congress Control Number: 2015939992

Springer Cham Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Printed on acid-free paper Springer International Publishing AG Switzerland is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)

Astronomisches Rechen-Institut

Germany

am Zentrum fuer Astronomie derUniversitaet HeidelbergMoenchhofstr. 12-14

Schmadel@ARI.Uni-Heidelberg.de

Dr. Lutz D. Schmadel

DE-69120 Heidelberg

Typesetting: Camera-ready by the author using TEX macros by Gernot Burkhardt.

Dedicated to

the Memory of

Ingrid van Houten-Groeneveld

(1921–2015)

Forewordto the Sixth Edition

How does one identify celestial objects? In ancienttimes, people looked up at the sky, saw patterns inthe fixed distribution of stars and gave names tothose patterns (constellations). These early astron-omers also named the brighter stars, as well as thehandful of non-fixed “stars” (the planets) that movedacross the sky. The ancient Egyptians painted starcharts on sarcophagi and on tomb ceilings, and theancient Sumerians recorded the names of their con-stellations on clay tablets. The earliest known cat-alogues of stars come from the Babylonians in thesecond millenium BCE. Chinese astronomers wereactive observers of the sky, producing star chartsand catalogues, as well as providing many of theearliest records of cometary appearances. A num-ber of Greek and Roman astronomers produced starcatalogues. The best known is probably ClaudiusPtolemy’s Almagest, based heavily on a cataloguecreated by Hipparchus about two centuries earlier,which listed 1,022 stars. During Europe’s Dark Ages,Islamic astronomers produced many star cataloguesand many stars still retain their Arabic names. Onecommon feature of these early catalogues was theuse of names or descriptions of the location within aconstellation to identify stars.

Designations for stars, as opposed to names or de-scriptions, were introduced in Johann Bayer’s Ura-nometria (1603), where he labelled each listed starwith a Greek letter followed by the genitive case ofthe constellation in which it lay. The letters were as-signed, roughly, in decreasing order of brightest: thebrightest star in Cygnus is α Cygni. For constella-tions where there were more stars than the available24 Greek letters, Bayer used lower-case Roman let-ters, then capital Roman letters. A second designa-tion system was introduced in John Flamsteed’s His-toria coelestis Brittanica (1725), using numerals withthe genitive constellation name: e.g., 61 Cygni. Inmodern catalogues, which can contain more one bil-lion objects, designations are used exclusively. Thereare simply too many objects listed in modern cata-logues to use names or descriptions. Designationsmay be assigned by the catalogue compilers or maybe derived from the published positions of the listedstars.

This natural evolution of stellar nomenclature fromnames to designations has been reflected in minor-planet nomenclature. When the first minor plan-ets were discovered in the first half of the 19th cen-tury, each newly discovered object quickly acquired

Cambridge, MA, January 2012

a name. Designations for minor planets were intro-duced in 1852, when newly discovered planets re-ceived a sequential number. The rapid assignment ofnew numbers caused a number of situations where anew number was assigned to a known object that hadbecome lost. The use of photography as a discoverytool in the last decade of the 19th century led to theconcept of provisional designations. Objects wouldreceive a provisional designation upon discovery andwould receive a number only when their orbits werejudged to be reliable enough to allow unambiguousfuture identification. Once numbered, objects couldbe named.

The assignment of names to numbered minor plan-ets continues. The names are not the principal formof identification for minor planets, but discovererslike to name their discoveries, so the tradition con-tinues. As recently as 1990, as many as 80% of the4,357 numbered minor planets had names. However,the rate of numbering since then has far outstrippedthe rate of naming. Today, with over 300,000 num-bered minor planets, only about 5% are named. Thisshould not be viewed as a failure or problem, sinceit is not required that every numbered minor planetshould have a name.

Since the 2000 General Assembly, the DMPN hasbeen an official publication of the International As-tronomical Union. This sixth edition, like its prede-cessors, has been produced by Lutz D. Schmadel andhis team. The IAU delegates responsibility for ap-proving new names to the 15-member Committee onSmall Body Nomenclature, a committee of IAU Di-vision III through its Commission 20. Although theproposers of each name are responsible for submit-ting the initial versions of the citations, significantediting is often required to correct spelling or gram-matical mistakes, to trim the citation length to therequired four-printed-line limit in the Minor PlanetCirculars, or (in extreme cases) to rewrite the ci-tations from scratch. Some of this editing work isundertaken at the Minor Planet Center before thenames are sent to the CSBN and some is done byCSBN members during the approval process. It isworth noting that there is an art to writing a namecitation that few astronomers seem to have mastered.In a broad sense, the DMPN is a collaborative effortby many individuals, but one must not underesti-mate the amount of work undertaken by Lutz D.Schmadel in preparing this publication. The astro-nomical community owes him a large debt of grati-tude.

Gareth V. WilliamsAssociate DirectorIAU Minor Planet Center

Preface

The Dictionary of Minor Planet Names (DMPN) wasfirst published in 1991, elucidating the meaning ofthe named and numbered minor planets. Consecu-tively, five further editions and two addenda of thismonograph followed in roughly three-year intervals1993, 1996, 1999, 2003, 2006, 2009, and 2012 in ac-cord with the time of IAU General Assemblies. Ac-cording to a resolution of IAU Division III of the2000 Manchester General Assembly DMPN attainedthe status of an official IAU publication. This Ad-dendum 2012 – 2014 to the 6th edition only updatesa fascinating story of a rather breathtaking evolutionand completes our common effort of a quarter of acentury.

Starting from rather low numbers of numbered andnamed minor planets we experienced an overwhelm-ing accumulation which is summarized in the follow-ing table. These figures demonstrate that the countof numbered objects has been multiplied by morethan a factor of 84 during the last 25 years! The evo-lution of the count of new names, however, retardedby a factor of not even 5. The extremely droppeddown percentage of named planets should stimulateall discoverers of already numbered minor planets topropose new names in order to produce a much largerportion of unique number/name combinations whichexclude any errors in the literature.

The sixth edition (and all her predecessors) served asthe basic survey, which is updated by this addendum.It contains not only the newly published names fromthe period 2012-2014 but also numerous correctionsand amendments to earlier editions. The completework is a thoroughly revised data collection and ev-ery effort has been made to check and/or correct all

Heidelberg, February 2015 Lutz D. Schmadel

Vol. Time numbered named ratio

1 Dec. 1991 5 012 3 957 79.0

2 Sep. 1993 5 655 4 512 79.8

3 June 1996 7 041 5 252 74.6

4 June 1999 10 666 6 730 63.1

5 Jan. 2003 52 224 10 038 19.2

5-1 Mar. 2006 120 437 12 804 10.6

5-2 Apr. 2009 207 942 15 056 7.2

6 Feb. 2012 310 376 16 863 5.4

6-1 Jan. 2015 422 636 19 044 4.5

information again. It goes without saying that thefundamental structure of DMPN has been left un-changed. As a matter of fact we always are in need ofinformation concerning, for example, life data and/orexplanation of name initials. Our colleagues are kind-ly asked for their support.

A publication like DMPN needs the support and en-couragement of many persons. I owe a great debt ofgratitude to my colleague Gernot Burkhardt for hisindefatigable support with the huge number-crun-ching and programming and his everlasting engage-ment in the preparation of all editions of the DMPNduring the last 25 years. The kind support by theIAU General Secretaries is highly appreciated. Ourgratitude is also due to Ramon Khanna and his teamfrom Springer-Verlag. I thank Gareth V. Williams,Associate Director of the Minor Planet Center for hishelpful piece of advice. Finally, I would like to thankmy wife Anna for her support and varied assistancewhich permitted me to realize this labour throughdecades.

Contents

IntroductionIntroductory Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1Minor Planet Designations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3Evolution of Naming Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4Information Content of the Catalogue . . . . . . . . . . . 7Statistics and Classification of the Names . . . . . . . . . 8Sources of Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Catalogue of Minor Planet Namesand Discovery Circumstances . . . . . . . . . . 13

Appendices1. Discoverers in Alphabetical Order . . . . . . . . . . 2532. Discoverers Ranking List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2623. Surveys, Corporate Discoveries . . . . . . . . . . . . 2654. Discovery Places in Alphabetical Order . . . . . . . . 2675. Discovery Places Ranking List . . . . . . . . . . . . 2736. Categories of Minor Planet Names . . . . . . . . . . 2757. Names Classification by Countries . . . . . . . . . . 2758. Nobel Laureates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2769. IAU Officers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278

10. Special Type Named Minor Planets . . . . . . . . 27911. Minor Planet Names with Unknown Meaning . . . . . 28212. Synonymous Minor Planet Names . . . . . . . . . . 284Publication dates of the MPCs and MPOs . . . . . . . . 286

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290

Index of Minor Planet Names . . . . . . . . . . . 293

viiForeword (to the 6th edition) . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

. .