How an asteroid ended up named after a cat called Mr. Spock
The first asteroids took names from Greek and Roman myth. As discoveries piled into the thousands, astronomers turned to spouses, colleagues, fictional characters and even pets. The 1971 naming of 2309 Mr. Spock, after the discoverer's cat, finally prompted the IAU to discourage pet names.
A minor planet is anything orbiting the Sun directly that is neither a planet nor a comet, and unlike the eight planets none has cleared its orbital neighbourhood. The family includes main-belt asteroids between Mars and Jupiter, near-Earth objects, Trojans that share the orbits of Earth, Mars, Jupiter or Neptune, centaurs among the giant planets, and the icy bodies of the Kuiper belt and scattered disc. The first, Ceres, was found in 1801 and called a planet, then an asteroid; the phrase minor planet arrived only in 1841. Since 2006 the IAU has preferred the category small Solar System bodies, with round ones like Pluto classed as dwarf planets.
Hundreds of thousands have been found, with thousands more every month, and naming follows three steps. A new object gets a provisional code built from its discovery year, half-month and sequence, such as 1932 HA. Once its orbit is secure it receives a number, and discoverers may then propose a name, which replaces the code: 1932 HA became 1862 Apollo. Most numbered objects never get a name. Numbering jumped from five digits to six in October 2005.
Naming customs evolved oddly. For years only female or feminized names were used, so when Alexander von Humboldt was honoured his asteroid became 54 Alexandra. 45 Eugenia, for Napoleon III's wife, was the first with a wholly non-classical name. Frivolity crept in with 482 Petrina and 483 Seppina, named after a discoverer's dogs, and continues with whimsical choices such as 9007 James Bond and the pair 13579 Allodd and 24680 Alleven. One firm rule: unlike comets, minor planets cannot be named after their own discoverers, so astronomers sometimes return the favour by naming finds after each other. A rare exception, 96747 Crespodasilva, honours Lucy d'Escoffier Crespo da Silva, who died aged 22 shortly after her discovery.
Names also shift between languages. Ceres was first called Cerere in Italian and becomes Demeter in Greek, while Chinese renders it as grain goddess planet.
Source: Minor planet
