Asteroid named after Portuguese astrophysicist

The Worldwide Astronomical Union (IAU) has named an asteroid after Pedro Machado, astrophysicist at Institute of Astrophysics and Area Sciences (IA), on the College of Sciences of the College of Lisbon (Portugal). Together with the nomination of Pedro Machado, there have been over 100 different nominations of asteroids and different small our bodies.

It’s virtually three kilometers in diameter and takes 4 and a half years to finish its orbit across the sun. We’re speaking about 2001 QL160, or moderately the asteroid 32599 Pedromachado. Pedro Machado has been honored by the Work group for the Nomenclature of Small Our bodies (WGSBN 2) of the Worldwide Astronomical Union (IAU) with the attribution of his identify to an asteroid.

The announcement was made on the Asteroids, Comets, Meteors (ACM) Convention, which happened in Flagstaff, Arizona, U.S., and was revealed within the WGSBN Bulletin.

Pedro Machado is a specialist in planetary atmospheres, however this can be a recognition for his contribution to a different subject of research of the solar system: the detection and characterization of asteroids and different objects that lie past Neptune’s orbit, known as trans-Neptunians. In some circumstances, this work crosses the research of planetary atmospheres, because it entails the research of areas of transition between the environment and outer space, the so-called exospheres, during which particles are misplaced out into space.

“It’s an sudden honor and an incredible satisfaction to see my identify on the checklist of recent asteroids,” says Pedro Machado. “I’m very grateful for this recognition of my work by the scientific community,” provides the researcher.

32599 Pedromachado orbits the sun between the planets Mars and Jupiter, within the area often called the Asteroid Belt. It was found in 2001 by way of the Lowell Observatory program Close to-Earth-Object Search (LONEOS) by NASA and Lowell Observatory, for the detection of spatial objects in near-Earth orbits.

In response to the process of naming astronomical objects, this asteroid was initially assigned a provisional identify, 2001 QL160, which incorporates the 12 months of discovery, in addition to letters and numbers denoting the day of the 12 months and order of the invention. After figuring out its orbit reliably, it acquired the definitive designation of 32599 by the IAU Minor Planet Center. Solely from that second on could possibly be proposed a reputation for this asteroid for analysis by the Working Group for Small Our bodies Nomenclatures.

With this attribution, Pedro Machado joins different IA researchers, Nuno Peixinho (IA and College of Coimbra, Portugal) and Pedro Lacerda (Instituto Pedro Nunes and IA, Portugal), who additionally noticed their work acknowledged with the attribution of their names to asteroids 40210 Peixinho and 10694 Lacerda.