You may wonder why some asteroids are not named until many years after they were discovered. There’s several reasons for this. Once discovered an asteroid is given a reference number. No asteroid is named until it’s compete orbit has been calculated, and this may take some time because there may be very few observations on which to make an accurate calculation. The final number of the asteroids, the ones you see listed below, were assigned at the same time as their name. Many asteroids are only known by their number for several years until someone decides to give it a name. Some asteroids are named for a specific reasons, as in the case of the one named after Freddie Mercury below.
(65) Cybele
Discovered 8 March 1861.
Named after the Phrygian
goddess Cybele shortly after its discovery. Early legends of Cybele relate how
she was born intersex and had the name Agdistis. The gods feared this
double-gendered deity and castrated her and thus she became Cybele. The
asteroid was originally named Maximiliana after King Maximilian II of Bavaria
(father of the gay King Ludwig II). At the time asteroids were given ancient
classical names, and Maximiliana was regarded as non-classical and was changed
to Cybele after protests from the most esteemed astronomers of the day.
(4544) Xanthus
Discovered
31 March 1989. Name published 27 June 1997.
Xanthus
is one of the most obscure of the many Greek names of Apollo, the pansexual god
of the Sun, archery, healing, prophecy and song. Xanthus means “the Fair”. This
asteroid was given one of the names of Apollo because is a member of the Apollo
group, asteroids whose orbits bring them close to Earth and may hit us. (4544)
Xanthus last crossed our orbit on 12th August at the point where we will be on
30th November.
(6039)
Parmenides
Discovered 3 September 1989.
Name published 15 April 1995.
Named after Parmenides of
Elea (late 5th century BC), a philosopher. In his lengthy poem “On Nature”, of
which only a small part has been preserved, he considered the plurality of
things as the appearance of only one eternal reality, whatever that means. He
also suggested that the Earth was a sphere, an idea that found few supporters,
except from his young protégé and lover Zeno. Parmenides and Zeno were spotted
by Socrates as visitors to the Great Panathenaic Games.
(9014)
Svyatorichter
Discovered 22 October 1985.
Name published 26 July 2000.
Svyatoslav Teofilovich
Richter (1915-1997) was a Russian pianist and People’s Artist of the USSR.
Then, as now, Russia was homophobic, and though Richter was never openly gay
his sexuality was an open secret in the Russian music world who recognised the
string of male companions as his lovers.
(11964) Catullus
Discovered
12 August 1994. Name published 9 April 2009.
The
Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus (84 BC–54 BC) still influences poetry and
art to this day. His poem Carmina 16 is notorious for its explicitness. It is
one of several poems he wrote which mentions a youth, or Juventius, who is
widely regarded as being Catullus’s lover. Catullus also had a girlfriend
called Lesbia.
(12607) Alcaeus
Discovered
24 September 1960. Name published 24 November 2007.
Alcaeus (c.620 BC-c.580 BC) was a Greek poet from the island of Lesbos.
His songs are as famous as those of Sappho (who also has an asteroid named
after her). Alcaeus was said to have been Sappho’s lover. He also wrote poems
to several of his young male lovers, including Lycos and Menon.
(14505) Barentine
Discovered 12 January 1996, Name
published 6 January 2007.
Named after Dr. John Caleb Barentine (b.1976) who
served as an observing specialist at the Apache Point Observatory telescope
from 2001 to 2006, and then as an observer for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.
Trained in stellar astronomy, he was introduced to planetary work by his
colleagues Gil Esquerdo and Carol Neese, who suggested his name for this
asteroid. Dr. Barentine is currently the Director of Conservation for the
International Dark-Sky Association. He is also an author on the history of
astronomy, and a member of the 500 Queer Scientists organisation.
(17473) Freddiemercury
Discovered 21 March 1991. Name published on 3 September
2016, the 70th anniversary of his birth.
Freddie Mercury (1946–1991) was a British songwriter and
the lead singer for the legendary rock group Queen. His distinctive sound and
large vocal range were hallmarks of his performance style, and he is regarded
as one of the greatest rock singers of all time. The name was suggested by the
provisional designation given to this asteroid before its full orbit was
calculated – 1991 FM3. The letters FM inspired the choice of Freddie Mercury’s
name; 1991, the year it was discovered, was the year Freddie died. Fellow Queen
band member and astronomer Brian May and Dr. Joel Parker of the Southwest
Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, were instrumental in getting this
asteroid named in time for Freddie’s 70th anniversary.
(36445)
Smalley
Discovered 23 August 2000.
Name published 21 September 2002.
Named after Kyle Smalley
(1961-2018), a software developer, amateur astronomer and team member of the
Powell Observatory Near-Earth-Object programme. She then went to work as a
software developer at the Minor Planet Centre, the official body responsible for
the cataloguing and naming of asteroids. It was while working there that she
transitioned and lived as Sonia Keys.
(58196) Ashleyess
Discovered 10 March 1992. Name published 20 May 2008.
Ashley Caroline Steel (b.1959) is the sister of Daniel Steel who
discovered this asteroid and has been very supportive of his career. Ashley was the vice-chair and global head of transport for KPMG,
from which she retired in 2014. Currently she holds non-executive roles on the
boards of National Express, GoCo and the BBC. She has been named one of the
UK's most influential gay people and appeared on the annual “Pink List”
published by The Independent newspaper for several consecutive years from 2006.
ASTEROID ALLIES
(4049) Noragal’
Discover 31 August 1973. Name published 17 March 1995.
Named after Eleonora Yakovlevna Gal'perina (1912-1992), literary
critic and translator, well-known under the pseudonym Nora Gal' for her Russian
translations of foreign works. She was the grandmother of gay poet Nikolai
Kuzmin (b.1968).
(6692) Antonínholý
Discovered
18 April 1985. Name published 2 June 2015.
Dr.
Antonín Holý (1936–2012) was a renowned Czech chemist who significantly
contributed to the development of antiretroviral drugs used in the treatment of
HIV and hepatitis B. He was the author of more than 400 scientific papers and
was awarded with honorary degrees from several universities at home and abroad.
(19175) Peterpiot
Discovered
2 August 1991. Name published 8 October 2014.
Dr.
Peter Piot (b.1949), a Belgian physician, co-discovered the ebola virus in
Zaire in 1976. In addition to providing the foundations of our understanding of
HIV infection, he is the author of 16 books and 500 scientific articles. He has
been the director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine since
2010. He was created a baron by the King of Belgium and an Honorary Knight
Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George by Queen Elizabeth II.
(52665) Brianmay
Discovered
30 January 1998, Name published 18 Jun 2008.
Brian May (b.1947) is lead guitarist and songwriter for the rock
group Queen which featured Freddie Mercury (for whom Brian campaigned to have
an asteroid named). In 2007 Brian received his Ph.D. in astrophysics from
Imperial College London for a thesis on zodiacal dust. Eight months later he
became Chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University. Brian is also the
co-founder of Asteroid Day, the annual observance on June 30th to raise
awareness of the possibility of an asteroid (such as Xanthus, one of the Apollo
Group mentioned above) hitting Earth. In 2016 Brian May was named Celebrity
Straight Ally at the British LGBT Awards. The name for this asteroid was
suggested by legendary British astronomer and broadcaster Sir Patrick Moore.
Through all my “Asteroid Updates” I’ve not shown you where any of
them are. You may have a vague idea of the asteroid belt between Mars and
Jupiter. Most asteroids orbit there. Only very large telescopes can see them.
This illustration above shows the orbits of three of the asteroids
I’ve listed today in relation to the orbits of the major planets of the inner
solar system. The illustration isn’t exactly to scale (the Sun would be less
than a pixel and not a yellow dot) but the general orbits are in their correct
relative position, even down to the fact the Sun is off-centre.
Orbits of the planets are in grey except for the Earth, which is
in red. The orbits of (65) Cybele, (4544) Xanthus and (17473) Freddiemercury
are shown in different colours.
Cybele is one of the outermost asteroids in the main belt. There
are many other asteroids that go beyond which we don’t need to concern
ourselves about today. You can probably see that the orbit of Xanthus, as a
member of the near-Earth-orbit asteroid of the Apollo group, crosses our orbit
twice a year. Just like the asteroid Apollo itself Xanthus could hit us in the
far and distant future.
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