Astronomer (SMU) a Hollywood Star
Saint Mary’s University observatory technician David Lane now has a star on the astronomy geek’s version of the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
He’s in good company too, with rock and roll’s Frank Zappa just one of the famous names to make the list. Several Canadian cities and universities have also been honoured, including Saint Mary’s in Halifax, where Mr. Lane works as a systems administrator in the astronomy and physics department.
The difference is that these stars — asteroids orbiting the sun, to be precise — are far from some earthly sidewalk.
“It’s amazing,” Mr. Lane said Thursday of the special recognition he received last weekend at the national general assembly of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada in Toronto.
“I know a few people who have asteroids named after them and it’s the kind of thing where, if you’re into astronomy, you kind of hope some day in your life that someone will name one after you,” he said. “You kind of have to wait until someone thinks of (you).”
Mr. Lane, also recently named president of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, has along with Atlantic Canadian amateur astronomer Paul Gray discovered a few supernovas, which are bright exploding stars. But he said scientists who discover asteroids never name their findings after themselves.
He was pleasantly surprised by the decision of David Levy, Wendee Levy and Tom Glinos to name their May 2004 asteroid discovery from the Jarnac Observatory in Arizona after him. The discoverers also cite Mr. Lane’s Earth Centered Universe software, “a brilliantly easy-to-use planetarium and telescope-control program,” as one of the reasons they think he’s out of this world.
The asteroid, named 117032 David-lane, can be found between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
Mr. Lane said it’s about five kilometres in diameter, “so it’s about the size of a city,” but said he can’t yet see it from Abbey Ridge Observatory, which is located in his backyard in Stillwater Lake, near Upper Tantallon.
