Asminor planet discoveries are confirmed, they are given a permanent number by theIAU'sMinor Planet Center (MPC), and the discoverers can then submit names for them, following the IAU'snaming conventions. The list below concerns those minor planets in the specified number-range that have received names, and explains the meanings of those names.
Based onPaul Herget'sThe Names of the Minor Planets,[6] Schmadel also researched the unclear origin of numerous asteroids, most of which had been named prior to World War II. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in thepublic domain: SBDB New namings may only beadded to this list below after official publication as the preannouncement of names is condemned.[7] The WGSBN publishes a comprehensive guideline for the naming rules of non-cometary small Solar System bodies.[8]
TheNear Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) programme, a joint-venture of the United States Air Force and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, began operations in December 1995. The program currently utilizes 1.2-meter telescopes with NEAT CCD cameras at two observing locations, Palomar Mountain and the Maui Space Surveillance Site.
Lam Chiu Ying (born 1949) has been the department head ofHong Kong Observatory, China. He is also the former chairman of Hong Kong Bird Watch Society and spends a lot of effort in promoting public awareness of global warming.
Shing-Tung Yau (born 1949), a Chinese-American mathematician who specializes in differential geometry.. He received the Fields Medal in 1982 for his contribution to the Calabi conjecture in algebraic geometry. He also received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1984 and the Wolf prize in Mathematics in 2009.
Ang Lee (born 1954), a Taiwanese-American film director, whose films includeThe Wedding Banquet (1993),Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) andBrokeback Mountain (2005). This last film won him the Academy Award for Best Director.
Tang Ti-sheng (1917–1959), a Cantonese opera playwright, scriptwriter and film director. During his 20-year career, Tang composed over 400 operas and achieved immense popularity within the Cantonese opera scene. His most famous works include Red Tears of an Aspen and The Reincarnation of Lady Plum Blossom.
Ho Koon Nature Education cum Astronomical Center, established in 1995, was the first special school in Hong Kong dedicated to science education. The words Ho Koon in Chinese mean "to observe" and comes from an ancient Chinese poem saying that one could be joyful through the observation of our physical Universe.
In Saku City, JAXA operates the Usuda Deep Space Center equipped with a 64-m-diameter parabolic antenna, which has been used to communicate with Japanese solar system probes, such as the Halley's comet probes "Sakigake" and "Suisei", the asteroid probe "Hayabusa" and the lunar orbiter "Kaguya" amongst others.
Savaria was the Roman name of the Hungarian townSzombathely, the administrative center ofVas county, located near the border with Austria. This naming also honors István Jankovics, director of the Gothard Astrophysical Observatory in Szombathely and discoverer of the supernovae 1968J, 1968S and 1969C.
Gianrico Filacchione (born 1972), an Italian astronomer who worked on the in-flight calibration of the imaging spectrometer VIMS-V on the Cassini mission. He currently studies Saturn's rings and hyperspectral data on icy satellites and is in charge of the calibration pipeline of Rosetta-VIRTIS, Dawn-VIR and Bepicolombo-VIHI experiments (IAU).
This article incorporates text from this source, which is in thepublic domain: SBDB New namings may only beadded to this list below after official publication as the preannouncement of names is condemned.[7] The WGSBN publishes a comprehensive guideline for the naming rules of non-cometary small Solar System bodies.[8]