Recognition for two Canty astronomers

Press, 29 June 1988, Page 41

Recognition for two Canty astronomers

Two University of Canterbury astronomers have been officially recognised as the discoverers of an asteroid which now glories in the name “3152 Jones.” The husband and wife team of Mr Alan Gilmour and Ms Pam Kiimartin, physics department technicians at the university’s Mount John Observatory, discovered the asteroid on June 7, 1983.

They named it after Mr Albert Jones, of Nelson, an amateur astronomer of world renown, and the name has recently been confirmed by a listing in the May 31 issue of the “Minor Planet Circular” produced by the Minor Planet Centre in Massachusetts. Mr Gilmour said that

they discovered the asteroid with Mount John’s 25cm aperture astronomical camera and tracked it for two months until the end of July, 1983. They picked it up again in May, 1984, and tracked it until August

The Minor Planet Centre was then able to calculate its orbit, and, on checking its files, found two previous sightings reported by the University of Texas McDonald Observatory in 1951, and another reported from the Crimea in 1981. Mr Gilmour and Ms Kilmartin were credited with the discovery as they provided enough data to calculate the asteroid’s orbit.

By a curious coincidence, the camera used

in the McDonald observations in 1951 was later acquired by Mount John and the same instrument was used for the 1983/84 observations. Asteroid 3152 Jones is a few kilometres across, and moves in a nearcircular orbit 2.6 times the Earth’s distance from the Sun, in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. It completes each orbit in 4.25 years.

Mr Jones was awarded an 0.8. E. in the 1987 Queen’s Birthday Honours List.

He is known worldwide for the quality of his observations over 50 years. He was the discoverer of Comet 1946 VI, and was one of the independent discoverers of Nova 1987 A.