Naming the sky - The Boston Globe
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/09/27/...
THIS STORY HAS BEEN FORMATTED FOR EASY PRINTING
Naming the sky
The true story of one man's quest to give George Plimpton a permanent
presence in orbit
By Samuel Arbesman | September 27, 2009
There’s something special about naming a celestial body, putting your thumbprint in the heavens up there with
Jupiter and Mars and the Horsehead Nebula. The idea speaks to our desire for immortality--attaching a name
to something that, if not quite eternal, will last far longer than anyone will be around to remember.
The world of commerce has figured this out, of course. Various services have arisen that claim to put your
name on a star for a fee. Unfortunately, as nice as it sounds, these names don’t count: You pay your money
and get a certificate, but it isn’t recognized by the only organization that actually matters, the International
Astronomical Union.
So what if you really do want to name a piece of the sky? Is there a way to name a newly discovered star, or
planet, or comet--maybe not after yourself, but maybe after someone you admire?
The answer, as it turns out, is yes, although it requires navigating some celestial red tape, and a fair amount of
luck. I discovered this for myself when I set out to honor a distinguished American author--specifically, George
Plimpton--by attaching his name to an asteroid. The journey took me to some interesting places: distant realms
where science and humanities intersect, where the present hangs its hat on eternity, and where there’s a rock
named Qwerty orbiting the sun.
In 2006, the big news in astronomy was that Pluto got demoted from planet to ”dwarf planet.” While everyone
else was fretting about what this meant for the solar system, my attention was elsewhere: on the object that
got Pluto downgraded. Tentatively it was called Xena, officially it became Eris, and I wanted to know how this
object, or anything else celestial, was named. If I could figure that out, maybe I could name something in
space as well.
It didn’t take me long before I encountered my first hard truth: naming a star was out of the question. No one
names stars anymore. A new star, when it’s discovered, just gets tagged with a dull collection of letters and
numbers. There are hundreds of millions of stars, and astronomers need a systematic way to find them, so
they long ago stopped giving them individual names.
If you discover a comet, however, things are different. It’s automatically named after you. For example, comets
Hyakutake, McNaught, and Hale-Bopp were discovered by (respectively) Messrs. Hyakutake, McNaught, Hale,
and Bopp. But I wasn’t likely to discover a comet.
When it came to other extraterrestrial objects--moons, asteroids, or even craters--the rules started to get a lot
more exciting. The extent of literary knowledge required to fully appreciate the names in our solar system is
staggering. So-called trans-Neptunian objects, the ones beyond the eighth planet, must be named for gods of
the underworld or gods related to creation (hello, Pluto). The moons of Uranus must be named after characters
from Shakespeare or Alexander Pope. Out among the moons of Jupiter, Celtic gods bump up against
characters from Dante’s Inferno. Features on the surface of Phobos, one of Mars’s moons, are named after
people and places from ”Gulliver’s Travels.” The features of Phoebe, a moon of Saturn, are graced with names
1 of 3
8/24/10 3:33 PM
Naming the sky - The Boston Globe
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/09/27/...
from the Argonautica, the tale of Jason and the Argonauts.
It’s a terrific blend of classics out there, a realm where King Arthur meets Hercules, where astronomers have
let their off-kilter imaginations run free. As the writer Clive Thompson astutely noted on his blog, if these
astronomers weren’t doing science, ”they’d be out in California painting unicorns on the sides of vans.”
Nowhere is this more evident than in the names of asteroids, or minor planets. These small rocky objects
orbiting the sun are generally found in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Some of them are governed
by strict naming rules--those that orbit in concert with Jupiter, for example, must be named after warriors from
the Trojan War. But assuming you discover an asteroid that has nothing particularly special about it, you can
name it whatever you like.
And suddenly, any restraint on astronomers’ whims truly vanishes. There is a whole group of asteroids named
after rock stars. Each member of Rush has a minor planet. Fantasia, Hammurabi, and Jerrylewis are all out
there. While Goldfinger is not named after the Bond film (it’s named after an astronomer), Vespa is named
after the motor scooter. Here is where we find the asteroid named Qwerty, and even an asteroid named ASCII.
If I was going to get to name something, it seemed, it was going to be an asteroid. Unfortunately, I couldn’t
claim discoverer’s rights. But after a bit of reading, I found a little-known loophole: If an asteroid has not been
named for 10 years since its discovery, it’s up for grabs. The name still has to conform to a few rules (it can’t
be of a commercial nature, for example) and be cleared by the 15-member Committee on Small-Body
Nomenclature that is part of the IAU. But suddenly, the potential for placing a name into the heavens seemed a
possibility, however slight.
It turns out that there are actually many such unnamed asteroids that have lain fallow. Since asteroids can be
discovered automatically using computational techniques, there are far more asteroids discovered than have
been given names. For example, Spacewatch is a project designed to spot asteroids that might collide with
Earth, and has discovered many new minor planets as part of its process.
So, after some looking, I found an asteroid that had been unnamed since being discovered in the early 1990s.
But what should I name it? Well, the answer was clear.
I hadn’t always been aware of George Plimpton. In fact, my introduction to George didn’t come until a few
months after his death, in the form of a Wall Street Journal crossword puzzle. The clues were an unbelievable
litany: ”Magazine edited by 117-Across from its inception”; ”Maestro under whose baton 117-Across once
played triangle”; ”Football team for which 117-Across briefly played quarterback”; ”TV series in which
117-Across once appeared as a professor.”
Who was this 117-Across? I was captivated that one person could do so much. George Plimpton, longtime
editor of the Paris Review, was the consummate amateur. He would throw himself in the ring with the pros
(once literally into the ring, with a light heavyweight boxing champ), handle himself with unmatched poise and
enthusiasm even while being occasionally humiliated, and then write about it.
So naming an asteroid after him seemed perfect: As George Plimpton had done everything else under the sun,
it was fitting that he would finally get to do the one thing he never tried his hand at--orbit. And if it worked, my
whole amateur asteroid-naming attempt, trying to squeeze in briefly alongside the professionals, would be
quintessentially Plimptonian.
So this was my moment. Following the rules outlined by the Minor Planet Center, I submitted a carefully
formatted citation for why the minor planet I had found should be named Plimpton.
And then I didn’t hear anything back.
2 of 3
8/24/10 3:33 PM
Naming the sky - The Boston Globe
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/09/27/...
What would George do? He would strap on his helmet and charge right in. I contacted the head of the Minor
Planet Center to see what had happened. He informed me that they generally receive so many names from
the discoverers themselves that they rarely find time to consider names for previously discovered asteroids.
He then asked me if there was a reason I wanted to name that particular asteroid after Plimpton.
Not that particular one, I replied, but then I suggested another unnamed asteroid that had been discovered on
George Plimpton’s birthday. And then I got a wonderful e-mail: The head of the center suggested a better
asteroid--one with a designation that included Plimpton’s initials! I now had him on my side. Of course, the
name still had to go before the Committee on Small-Body Nomenclature. He told me I would find out in a
couple of months whether I had successfully named the asteroid.
Around the two-month mark, when new asteroid names are officially released, I went to the Minor Planet
Center’s website, hands slightly shaking, and found it: an asteroid named Plimpton. My citation had been
published:
(7932) Plimpton = 1989 GP
George Plimpton (1927-2003) was an American author, editor, actor, and all-round Renaissance man. As the
founding editor of the Paris Review, he fostered the careers of many now-famous writers. A giant in the world
of participatory journalism, he chronicled his exploits as an amateur in many fields, especially professional
sports.
Outer space is big, old, and overwhelmingly difficult to comprehend with our little brains. It becomes almost a
human imperative for us to try to confine the universe in one of the few ways we can. Signing our names on
objects in space is our minor way of attempting to grasp it, like sending a writer out with the Detroit Lions and
hoping he can help us understand what football is really like.
I’m well aware that this naming hasn’t changed the universe in any appreciable way. Comets whiz by, stars
orbit the galactic center, and craters slowly erode, independent of their titles. The star group officially
designated M11 couldn’t care less if it’s known as the Wild Duck Cluster. When Pluto was demoted, while
schoolchildren wept, Pluto traced its elliptical path about the sun, unmoved by their tears.
Nonetheless, amid all this indifference, we have to find meaning in any way we can. And I’m happy to think
that this little ball of rock is now whirling through space with Plimpton’s name on it, even if it’s blissfully
unaware that it, too, is now a clue to 117-Across.
Samuel Arbesman is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School.
He is a regular contributor to Ideas.
© Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company
3 of 3
8/24/10 3:33 PM