Asteroid (132 798) Kürti
How it all happened ....
When I started to search for new asteroids in SkyMorph archive back in 2006, I had no idea at all that in a short time I would name a new asteroids, neither that between orbits of Mars and Jupiter there would move a minor planet named after me. Both are reality now!
In november 2008, the Committee on Small Body Nomenclature of the International Astronomical Union (CSBN) officially accepted the name Kürti for asteroid 132 798, previously known by its provisional designation 2002 PU167: (132 798) Kürti.
The name was suggested by Marco Langbroek, Dutch amateur astronomer who discovered this asteroid on NEAT images in SkyMorph archive. I was honoured by this.
Naming citation for asteroid
Naming citation was published in Minor Planet Circular nr. 64313:
(132798) Kürti = 2002 PU167
Discovered 2002 Aug. 8 by NEAT at Palomar
Stefan Kürti (b. 1960) is a Slovakian amateur astronomer with a focus on a minor planets. Among his discoveries are two near-earth objets. The name was suggested by M. Langbroek.
Orbit plot for (132 798) Kurti in the Solar System
Orbital elements for (132 798) Kürti
| excentricity | e = 0.0915638 |
| semi-major axis | a = 2.569002 AU |
| perihelium distance | q = 2.3337745 AU |
| inclination | i = 4.61174 ° |
| longitude of the ascending node |
Omega = 131.12609 ° |
| argument of perihelion | omega = 117.52157 ° |
| time of perihelion passage | t = 2018 Jun. 17 |
| >period | P = 4.12 years |
Minor planet (132 798) Kürti is a Main Belt asteroid, with its orbit between planets Mars and Jupiter. Estimated diamater of asteroid is 2.17 kilometers.
Notes: on the same triplet you can also find asteroid 2002 OG32. I found it during
preparation of this photo for my web page. Marco Langbroek probably didn´t noticed it
at the time of his hunting. So he "left" its discovery for me. As it was possible to find
another 2 nights positions, the minor planet got provisional designation 2002 OG32.
Similar situation happened also with discovery images of the asteroid
Langbroek. There you can also find
unidentified object, that I missed during my search. But Marco couldn´t find
another positions for it, so it is still uncatalogized.
But sooner or later it will be surely identify by one of the big surveys ...
Update: since my discovery of this asteroid more than a year ago
MPC still got only data of 2002 OG32 I found on NEAT images. Meantime FindOrb software was improved a bit
and I got some more practise with precovery work too. So I tried to check whether
I could find more positions for this minor planet. And I found! This time I not only
extended the observational arc in 2002, but I added another positions from 2001.
This new data sent to MPC improved orbital solutions and MPC could linked it with
more observations from their data, so from 2 weeks arc now it is object with 10
oppositions and with U=0. So 2002 OG32 should be numbered soon.