An asteroid measuring 2.5 to 5.5 miles across has been named after UMass Lowell. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) in August officially christened minor planet No. 7806 as “Umasslowell” in honor of the University’s academic and scientific achievements.

The official citation for 7806 Umasslowell, published in Minor Planet Center Circular No. 63639, reads: “The University of Massachusetts at Lowell is an educational and research institution with roots dating back to the 1890s. UMass Lowell faculty and students conduct pioneering work in such fields as nanotechnology, advanced polymers, life sciences and radar imaging.”

The IAU, through its 15-member Committee on Small Body Nomenclature, is the scientific organization responsible for the naming of small bodies in the solar system, such as asteroids and comets.

“Asteroid names are normally proposed by the discoverers, but other proposals are sometimes considered,” says Dr. Brian G. Marsden, director of the IAU’s Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge. According to Marsden, of the nearly 14,700 names that had been given so far to asteroids, only about 300 have been bestowed to institutes, observatories and universities. In the U.S., these include Princeton University, UC Berkeley, Harvard, Brown University, Caltech, MIT and Cornell.

Umasslowell revolves around the Sun at an average distance of 226 million miles and takes 3.8 years to complete one orbit. According to the MPC Circular, the asteroid was discovered on October 26, 1971, by Czech astronomer Lubos Kohoutek at Hamburg Observatory in Germany, and was given the provisional designation 1971 UM. Many people remember him as the discoverer of the famous Comet Kohoutek in 1973.

Asteroid 7806 Umasslowell is currently about 202 million miles from Earth. It shines very dimly at magnitude 18.7, near the star Antares, and lies close to the boundary of the constellations Scorpius and Ophiuchus. One would need a fairly large telescope and a sensitive electronic camera to record its image.

For more technical information about Umasslowell, including an interactive diagram of its orbit, visit the Solar System Dynamics website of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=7806;orb=1;cov=0;log=0#orb

The asteroid’s name was proposed by Edwin L. Aguirre, a former associate editor of Sky & Telescope magazine who is now the science & technology writer at UMass Lowell, and his wife, Imelda B. Joson, Sky & Telescope’s former photo editor.

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