Utah NASA Ambassador Patrick Wiggins just named the 5th asteroid he’s discovered over the years after the state’s largest university.
“Henceforth and forevermore, that lonely little rock floating around in space out beyond the orbit of mars but not quite as far as Jupiter will be named for the University of Utah,” Wiggins said.
The Asteroid was discovered in 2008 and given the designation of 2008RV77. It wasn’t until recently that the International Astronomical Union, which is in charge of formal asteroid names, gave the a-okay on changing the name. However, the name Wiggins proposed wasn’t the name the asteroid was eventually given: Univofutah.
“I got with the people at the U, we came up with a name, we submitted it, it kind of got rejected, what they did was kind of shorten it and they turned it into…Univofutah. That’s just the way they do things,” Wiggins said. “We were hoping it was going to be something a little more that would roll off your tongue than that, but it turned out not to be.”
Wiggins discovered the “faint dot” while surveying the sky with his modestly sized telescope. The asteroid is between one and two kilometers wide and impossible to see from Earth with your naked eye.
He said a lot of people ask him if Univofutah could eventually collide with Earth.
“It’s in an orbit that has it well beyond the orbit of Mars…and that’s almost certainly where it is going to spend the rest of time,” Wiggins explained.
Wiggins said it’s getting harder and harder to find asteroids that haven’t been detected before. He said this one may be the last he’ll get to name.