Calvin Names Two More Asteroids

April 12, 2007 == MEDIA ADVISORY

Summary: Two asteroids discovered at Calvin College in late 2005 and early
2006 have just received their official names.

Full story, including animated GIFs, see
http://www.calvin.edu/news/releases/2006-07/more-asteroids.htm

A pair of Calvin-discovered asteroids have been given official names,
including one named for a school in New Mexico where Calvin has an observatory
and one named for a Calvin graduate who teaches at that school.

Asteroid 145475 was discovered in October 2005 by Calvin College professor
Larry Molnar and earlier this month was officially named "Rehoboth" in honor of
Rehoboth Christian School, just east of Gallup, New Mexico, where Calvin has
established a remotely operated observatory on the school's campus.

Asteroid 134224 also was discovered by Molnar in January 2006 and has been
named "De Young" in honor of Mike De Young, a teacher at Rehoboth who helped
plan and construct the observatory and continues to help in its operation.

The recent discoveries and names are part of a growing Calvin astronomy
program that sees Calvin classes making regular new finds in the heavens. Those
finds grow out of a decision in 2003 to purchase new, computer-controlled
telescopes thanks to National Science Foundation grant money: one replacing the
1970 instrument in the dome on campus, and a second one placed at a dark-sky
site in Rehoboth, able to be operated over the internet by Calvin students.

"These telescopes," Molnar says, "are used for a wide range of observations by
students in all astronomy courses, some physics courses and independent
research projects. Classroom observations of asteroids have been a featured use
since the commissioning of the new telescopes. Our goal is for students to
understand better how real science works by aiming for a new discovery. As far
as we know this is the only astronomy class in the world in which discovery of
a new solar system object is a regular assignment."

Molnar notes that when a new asteroid is discovered it is given a provisional
name, but that it must be tracked for a number of years to fully establish its
orbit before the discoverer is given the privilege of naming it.

These two new named asteroids join asteroids discovered in 2003 and 2004 and
named last summer (those two were named Asteroid Spoelhof and Asteroid
Griffioen after a former Calvin president and a former Calvin professor).

Contact Molnar at 616-526-6341

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Received on Thu Apr 12 08:18:22 2007