| Did you know there's a minor planet (an asteroid) named after Villa-Lobos? This information comes from the The Minor Planet Center (MPC,) which operates at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, under the auspices of Commission 20 of the International Astronomical Union (IAU.) |
| The designation is (7244) Villa-Lobos = 1991 PQ1. (7244) Villa-Lobos was discovered by E.W. Elst at the European Southern Observatory in La Silla, Chile, on August 5, 1991. |
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As I learned from the excellent European Southern Observatory's website:
"Asteroids are small solid planetary bodies revolving around the Sun in orbits that are mostly located in the so-called Main Asteroid Belt, confined between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Most of them are thought to be fragments derived from catastrophic, past collisions between larger asteroids. By mid-1997, the orbits of about 8000 asteroids in the solar system were sufficiently well known to allow them to be officially numbered by the rules of the International Astronomical Union."
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| Villa-Lobos is in good company. Browsing through the MPC Name List of Minor Planets, I found: |
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| (4382) Stravinsky |
(1034) Mozartia |
(4527) Schoenberg |
(4134) Schutz |
| (4345) Rachmaninoff |
(4734) Rameau |
(4040) Purcell |
(3159) Prokof'ev |
| (4850) Palestrina |
(4972) Pachelbel |
(3954) Mendelssohn |
(4148) McCartney |
| (1405) Sibelius |
(3992) Wagner |
(4579) Puccini |
(3975) Verdi |
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As I learned from the excellent European Southern Observatory's website:
"Asteroids are small solid planetary bodies revolving around the Sun in orbits that are mostly located in the so-called Main Asteroid Belt, confined between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Most of them are thought to be fragments derived from catastrophic, past collisions between larger asteroids. By mid-1997, the orbits of about 8000 asteroids in the solar system were sufficiently well known to allow them to be officially numbered by the rules of the International Astronomical Union."
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| There are plenty more: astronomers seem to be quite a musical lot. The MPC website includes a page of Rock and Rollers who have minor planets named for them. |
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| I haven't been able to track down a picture of (7244) Villa-Lobos yet, but here's one of (4150) Starr - an asteroid named for Ringo Starr, about 7-15 km. in diameter, in orbit about 300 million miles from the sun. |
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| Any astronomers out there who have new information to add, or who can correct any mistakes I've made, please let me know. |
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