As minor planet discoveries are confirmed, they are given a permanent number by the IAU's Minor Planet Center (MPC), and the discoverers can then submit names for them, following the IAU's naming conventions. The list below concerns those minor planets in the specified number-range that have received names, and explains the meanings of those names.
Official naming citations of newly named small Solar System bodies are approved and published in a bulletin by IAU's Working Group for Small Bodies Nomenclature (WGSBN).[1] Before May 2021, citations were published in MPC's Minor Planet Circulars for many decades.[2] Recent citations can also be found on the JPL Small-Body Database (SBDB).[3] Until his death in 2016, German astronomer Lutz D. Schmadel compiled these citations into the Dictionary of Minor Planet Names (DMP) and regularly updated the collection.[4][5]
Based on Paul Herget's The 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 the public domain: SBDB New namings may only be added 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]
64001–64100
| Named minor planet | Provisional | This minor planet was named for... | Ref · Catalog |
|---|---|---|---|
| 64070 NEAT | 2001 SS272 | The Near 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. | JPL · 64070 |
64101–64200
| Named minor planet | Provisional | This minor planet was named for... | Ref · Catalog |
|---|---|---|---|
| There are no named minor planets in this number range | |||
64201–64300
| Named minor planet | Provisional | This minor planet was named for... | Ref · Catalog |
|---|---|---|---|
| 64288 Lamchiuying | 2001 UL10 | Lam Chiu Ying (born 1949) is the department head of Hong 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. | JPL · 64288 |
| 64289 Shihwingching | 2001 UA11 | Shih Wing-ching (born 1949), a Chinese columnist who writes for a free daily newspaper in Hong Kong. He has been an active philanthropist. | JPL · 64289 |
| 64290 Yaushingtung | 2001 UD11 | 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. | JPL · 64290 |
| 64291 Anglee | 2001 UX11 | Ang Lee (born 1954), a Taiwanese-American film director, whose films include The Wedding Banquet (1993), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) and Brokeback Mountain (2005). This last film won him the Academy Award for Best Director. | JPL · 64291 |
| 64295 Tangtisheng | 2001 UW13 | 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. | JPL · 64295 |
| 64296 Hokoon | 2001 UB14 | 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. | JPL · 64296 |
64301–64400
| Named minor planet | Provisional | This minor planet was named for... | Ref · Catalog |
|---|---|---|---|
| There are no named minor planets in this number range | |||
64401–64500
| Named minor planet | Provisional | This minor planet was named for... | Ref · Catalog |
|---|---|---|---|
| There are no named minor planets in this number range | |||
64501–64600
| Named minor planet | Provisional | This minor planet was named for... | Ref · Catalog |
|---|---|---|---|
| 64547 Saku | 2001 WF | 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. | JPL · 64547 |
| 64553 Segorbe | 2001 WR15 | Segorbe, municipality of Castelló province, Spain, where the discovery occurred † | MPC · 64553 |
64601–64700
| Named minor planet | Provisional | This minor planet was named for... | Ref · Catalog |
|---|---|---|---|
| There are no named minor planets in this number range | |||
64701–64800
| Named minor planet | Provisional | This minor planet was named for... | Ref · Catalog |
|---|---|---|---|
| There are no named minor planets in this number range | |||
64801–64900
| Named minor planet | Provisional | This minor planet was named for... | Ref · Catalog |
|---|---|---|---|
| There are no named minor planets in this number range | |||
64901–65000
| Named minor planet | Provisional | This minor planet was named for... | Ref · Catalog |
|---|---|---|---|
| 64974 Savaria | 2002 AF11 | Savaria was the Roman name of the Hungarian town Szombathely, the administrative center of Vas 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. | JPL · 64974 |
| 64975 Gianrix | 2002 AG12 | 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). | JPL · 64975 |
References
- ^ "WGSBN Bulletin Archive". Working Group Small Body Nomenclature. 14 May 2021. Retrieved 16 May 2021.
- ^ "MPC/MPO/MPS Archive". Minor Planet Center. Retrieved 27 July 2016.
- ^ "JPL – Solar System Dynamics: Discovery Circumstances". Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Retrieved 25 June 2019.
- ^ Schmadel, Lutz D. (2003). Dictionary of Minor Planet Names. Springer Berlin Heidelberg. ISBN 978-3-540-00238-3. Retrieved 27 July 2016.
- ^ Schmadel, Lutz D. (2006). Dictionary of Minor Planet Names – Addendum to Fifth Edition: 2003–2005. Springer Berlin Heidelberg. ISBN 978-3-540-34360-8. Retrieved 27 July 2016.
- ^ Herget, Paul (1968). The Names of the Minor Planets. Cincinnati, Ohio: Minor Planet Center, Cincinnati Observatory. OCLC 224288991.
- ^ "Guide to Minor Body Astrometry – When can I name my discovery?". Minor Planet Center. Retrieved 20 July 2019.
- ^ "Minor Planet Naming Guidelines (Rules and Guidelines for naming non-cometary small Solar-System bodies) – v1.0" (PDF). Working Group Small Body Nomenclature (PDF). 20 December 2021.
This page was last edited on 12 November 2023, at 15:06