Asteroid (6714) Montréal

Named in honour of the city of Montréal, Canada. Host for the IAU General Assembly in 1979, Montréal has combined the best of English and French cultures since its founding in 1642. The city has a rich astronomical tradition, as can be seen in several outdoor works of art that emphasize the city's connection to the stars.
Name proposed and citation prepared by David H. Levy.

Orbit type: Main Belt Asteroid 

Ref: MPC 42356

Continue Reading

Asteroid (6532) Scarfe

Named in honour of Colin D. Scarfe (b. 1940), professor of astronomy at the University of Victoria since 1965.

Continue Reading

Asteroid (6260) Kelsey

Named in honor of Frances Oldham Kelsey (b.1914 in Cobble Hill, British Columbia - d.2015 in London, Ontario), research pharmacologist at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in Washington, D.C. Kelsey's prescient research led to the recognition that fetal malformation can result from drugs that appear harmless to adults.

Continue Reading

Asteroid (6081) Cloutis

Edward Cloutis (b.1958), professor at the University of Winnipeg, studies the spectra of mineral assemblages similar to those found on planetary surfaces. He studied at the University of Alberta and finished a Ph.D. in 1992 under Dorian Smith and was the first to derive a relationship between the olivine-orthopyroxene fraction and the ratio of silicate absorption bands in reflectance spectra.

Orbit type: Main Belt Asteroid

Reference: MPC 46007

Continue Reading

Asteroid (5899) Jedicke

Named in honour of the Jedicke family. Peter Jedicke (b. 1955-06-15 in Wiesbaden, Germany), Robert Jedicke (b. 1963-01-30 in Niagara Falls, Canada), and June Jedicke-Zehr (b. 1966-03-17 in Niagara Falls, Canada) grew up in Niagara Falls, where they attended James C.

Continue Reading

Asteroid (5688) Kleewyck

The name Klee Wyck was given by Vancouver Island's coastal people to the famous Victoria artist Emily Carr on one of her many painting expeditions into the coastal wilderness in the early 1900s. The name in the Nuu-Chah-Nulth people's language translates to "the smiling one." The name was also used for the friendly orca that served as the official mascot to the fifteenth Commonwealth Games held in Victoria, British Columbia, 1994-08-18 to 1994-08-28.

Continue Reading

Asteroid (5661) Hildebrand

This Hilda group member is named in honour of the well-known Canadian geologist Alan R. Hildebrand (b. 1955-05-11), who discovered that the Chicxulub Crater in the Yucatan region resulted from an asteroid impact that coincided with the terminal Cretaceous extinctions. His linking of a "smoking gun" to a major extinction event in geologic history provided evidence of fundamental importance to the resolution of a centuries-old debate on the demise of the dinosaurs and the occurrence of catastrophes in the earth's history.

Continue Reading

Asteroid (5621) Erb

Named in honour of Bryan Erb (b. 1931-04-12 in Calgary, Canada,) and Dona Marie Erb (née German, b. in Calgary, Canada), friends of the discoverer. Bryan studied at the University of Alberta and at Cranfield in the U.K. He joined Avro Canada in 1955, where he conducted aerothermodynamic analysis on the Arrow. During Project Mercury, he predicted the performance of the heatshield, and in 1960 became a member of the 8-person advanced vehicles team that laid the foundations for Apollo.

Continue Reading

Asteroid (5424) Covington

Named in honour of Arthur Covington (b. 1913; d. 2001), Canada's first radio astronomer. His discovery, during the partial solar eclipse of 1946-11-23, that microwave emission was far more intense from the vicinity of sunspots than elsewhere on the sun, was the first indicator that magnetic fields were important in the generation of nonthermal cosmic radio emission. In 1947 Covington inaugurated at the National Research Council of Canada daily measurements of the solar microwave flux at 10.7 cm. Name suggested and citation provided by C.

Continue Reading

Asteroid (5272) Dickinson

Named in honour of Terence Dickinson (b. 1943-11-10, d. 2023-02-01), Canada's foremost popularizer of astronomy. Terry, as he was known, became fascinated with astronomy at age 5, when he saw a brilliant meteor from the sidewalk in front of his home in Toronto. This early interest soon became the defining characteristic of Dickinson’s life. From 1973 to 1975 he was editor of Astronomy magazine, and he held scientific positions with the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto, the Strasenburgh Planetarium in Rochester and the McLaughlin Planetarium in Toronto.

Continue Reading

Pages

Subscribe to RASC RSS