Famous Names

What do these names have in common?  Pretoria, Libya, Hartbeespoortdam, Rhodesia, Inanda, Knysna, Impala, Umtata, Zulu, Chaka.  You don’t know?  Throw in Bobhope, Smuts, Chaka, Kenya, Majuba, Broederstroom and Rembrandt and you obviously have worked out that they are all names of minor planets that were discovered in South Africa.

These are just some of the 153 minor planets found in South Africa.  Five were discovered in Bloemfontein, one at Broederstroom and the rest at the observatory in Johannesburg.

The first, number 715 and named Transvaalia,  was found by H.E Wood on April 22 1911 at the Transvaal observatory.  At that time the observatory did not yet have the 26-inch refractor and were using a 9-inch refractor and had the use of the Franklin-Adams 10-inch photographic refractor which they were using to complete the Franklin-Adams photographic star atlas, so presumably this asteroid was discovered with one of these instruments.

The same applies, I guess, to the next three to be found.  Number 790 (Pretoria) was found on January 16 1912, number 758 (Mancunia) was found on May 18th 1912 and number 982 (Franklina) was found on May 21 1922, all of these by H.E Wood.  Mancunia is the Latin name for the city of Manchester, the home town of the discoverer. Franklina was named for John Franklin-Adams who had given the 10-inch telescope to the observatory and who was the owner of the 6-inch/7-inch telescope which the Johannesburg centre now owns.  He also has a second minor planet named for him, number 1925 (Franklin-Adams).  The 10-inch was also the telescope which was used to discover Proxima Centauri.

E. Hertzsprung, of H-R diagram fame, was the next person to find a minor planet in South Africa - number 1702 (Kalahari) on July 7th 1924.

Then came another six by Wood- 1032 (Pafuri), 1663 (van den Bos), 2193 (Jackson), 3300 (McGlassen), 1305 (Pongola) and 1096 (Reunerta).

McGlassen was named in honour of Van McGlassen, head of the Computation Facility at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics. This name was proposed by Brian Marsden who made the identifications for this object.  There are two interesting aspects to this name.  Firstly the number does not fall in chronological sequence with other discoveries.  This is because minor planets, when discovered are given a preliminary designation, like 1998BF, which indicates the year of discovery, the half-month of discovery (A=first half January, B=second half January, C=first half February etc) and a sequential letter of discoveries within that half-month - A, B, C etc.  The discovery only receives an official number when it has been observed at a second opposition and it’s orbit has been determined, which may only happen years after it was first observed.

The second point about this planet is that it was not named by its discoverer. There are many minor planets like this.  In fact there are even planets that have not been named many years after their discovery.  The IAU has now adopted a rule that if a minor planet is not named within 10 years of its discovery, then the discoverer loses the right to name it.

Brian Fraser