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Gondola in the sky
Jan. 15th, 2005 10:20 pmWhat did I do today? Well, mostly, I did this. At least, part of it.
I really like the whole asteroid naming thing, so when I jumped into the Wikipedia thing, that's where I gravitated immediately. I've wandered around and done other stuff(yesterday I was fixing typos in the Vomiting article, for instance), but I always come back to the asteroid naming stuff.
There are a few sites up where individual observatories and prolific asteroid discoverers post the names they've bestowed, and why, and between that and the really obvious ones about half of the names can get filled in. But for the rest of them, there's only the ultimate source--Lutz D. Schmadel's Dictionary of Minor Planet Names. (Because asteroids are really called minor planets, since it turns out they're nothing like stars at all.) And this book is hard to come by. For some reason, it doesn't top best-seller lists, and on Amazon it's like $200. I realize that academic publications and reference books are more pricy, but man! For information that I think should be freely available on some web site on the Net! I mean, what is this, the Age of Typewriters?
Anyway. The only copy of Schmadel I can find anywhere around is at the University of Alberta, at the Cameron Library. No problem, that's practically my ol' stompin' grounds. Used to do homework there every day when I was takin' Physics. Yup. Problem is, it's non-circulating. Because it's got "Dictionary" in the title, it's considered a Reference book, and so they keep it on their shelves. I've always taken issue with what library people consider "Reference", though, because usually I want to take them home and pore over them, instead of having to sit in the library. Especially these days, when opportunities to go to Cameron Library are not as often as they were when I was taking classes at the University every day.
I mentioned on December 30th my "outdoor adventure", with the promise to give some details later. See, this was when, having a free afternoon in the middle of a free week or so of holidays, I decided to go to the Cameron Library and spend some quality time with Schmadel and Wikipedia. So I bundled up and drove down to the University. It was -20°C with -30°C windchill, as I said before. I parked in one of the aboveground, unenclosed parkades. It cost $3.75 for the full day, which was $1.25 for each of three tickets from the machine because the booth was unmanned. I only had enough change for one of those, so I slogged down to the Student Union Building, which was open if mostly deserted, and got some change at the little convenience store in there. Then back to the parkade, buying two more tickets, walking up to where I was parked to stick them on the dashboard. Then to the library. Or so I thought.
The Engineering building, normally the first point of access to the "Science Complex" of buildings at the University, was locked. So I trudged down, with increasingly numb thighs, to the Central Academic Building, next entry point. Also locked. And there are signs saying something about things being closed between Christmas and New Year's. Fuck. I go down to Cameron's itself. Definitely closed, from December 23rd through to January 2nd. Double fuck. No sign of a haven from the freezing temperatures, and certainly no joy on the Schmadel front. I go back to SUB and sit and read a few stories from my book while feeling returns to my legs. I go back to the parkade, where I have used barely one of the three tickets I purchased. Then I drive back home, seething. I realize that there may be few students on campus in the Christmas season, but do they seriously have to shut down the entire bloody thing? I mean, I'm nobody, as far as the University is concerned--a not especially generous alumnus, maybe--but would department bigwigs have to deal with the libraries being shut down as well? Anyway, I'm sure there are good reasons, and I'm feeling more charitable now than I was on the 30th, not being in danger of freezing or anything. And I could have checked the web site, found out that everything was closed, and given up before even trying to go down there. I'm sure I would've felt mild disappointment, not much more, so half of it was just being made at my own shortsightedness.
Anyway. Today I checked the web site, made sure they were open, checked on the parking situation to see if there was anything better(no), and went down a little better prepared. The parkade was actually manned(still only $3.75), the buildings were all open(though not the SUB post office, where Nicole wanted me to try mailing some stuff for her), and the book was there at the library. I had to go to the circulation desk and get a little login code, not having an actual valid student ID any more, but that was it. At 2:00 I sat down to the work of entering the meanings of asteroid names. I started at 1500 because I figured most of the early ones would already be done, and I opened the book somewhere in that range.
You know, I'd always kind of suspected that while there are some cool asteroids out there, named after important scientists and musicians and stuff, most of them are named after trivial things. And it's true. As I understand it, there was a period of a few decades when they decided to stop naming asteroids at all, and when they changed their minds, they had a big backlog. Most of the asteroids I did today were discovered in the 1930's, but named in the 1970's, so I suspect a lot of them were from that backlog. They went through the various directors of the observatories where they were discovered, and astronomers working there, and their assistants, and their office staff, and their children and grandchildren and daughters-in-law. And their hometowns, and the rivers where they like to go fishing.
This is why I think it's unfair that I don't get to name asteroids. Because I could come up with lots of really cool names for them. Still working on the plan to end up in charge of the IAU Minor Planet Centre.
Anyway, it was 4:30 when I finished going through those 500 names, so about half an hour per hundred. I wondered if I was going to run out, but the book, despite being a couple of editions old by now, goes up to around 5000. This is the 1992 edition, I believe, and there's been tons more asteroids named since then. Though apparently, despite accelerating rates of discovery, they're not planning on speeding up the naming process. Well, maybe one day they'll get with the program and streamline the process, putting everything up on the Web instead of issuing Minor Planet Circulars(also pricy to subscribe to).
One thing I think is cool, though. They have a project called LINEAR which has discovered huge numbers of asteroids, in its search for Near-Earth Objects. This, of course, poses major problems for the asteroid naming process. Somebody had a brainstorm, though, which resulted in The Ceres Connection. Which is, basically, giving away asteroid names as prizes in science fairs, to teachers and to students. Yes, that's right, do well in a science fair and you could get an asteroid named after you! That would've been a great incentive for me, at any rate. (Never did any science-fair stuff when I was a kid. Too much work.) From a cursory inspection of the lists, it looks like it's not just a U.S. thing, either, because there's Chinese and Indian winners up there.
So that's something.
I really like the whole asteroid naming thing, so when I jumped into the Wikipedia thing, that's where I gravitated immediately. I've wandered around and done other stuff(yesterday I was fixing typos in the Vomiting article, for instance), but I always come back to the asteroid naming stuff.
There are a few sites up where individual observatories and prolific asteroid discoverers post the names they've bestowed, and why, and between that and the really obvious ones about half of the names can get filled in. But for the rest of them, there's only the ultimate source--Lutz D. Schmadel's Dictionary of Minor Planet Names. (Because asteroids are really called minor planets, since it turns out they're nothing like stars at all.) And this book is hard to come by. For some reason, it doesn't top best-seller lists, and on Amazon it's like $200. I realize that academic publications and reference books are more pricy, but man! For information that I think should be freely available on some web site on the Net! I mean, what is this, the Age of Typewriters?
Anyway. The only copy of Schmadel I can find anywhere around is at the University of Alberta, at the Cameron Library. No problem, that's practically my ol' stompin' grounds. Used to do homework there every day when I was takin' Physics. Yup. Problem is, it's non-circulating. Because it's got "Dictionary" in the title, it's considered a Reference book, and so they keep it on their shelves. I've always taken issue with what library people consider "Reference", though, because usually I want to take them home and pore over them, instead of having to sit in the library. Especially these days, when opportunities to go to Cameron Library are not as often as they were when I was taking classes at the University every day.
I mentioned on December 30th my "outdoor adventure", with the promise to give some details later. See, this was when, having a free afternoon in the middle of a free week or so of holidays, I decided to go to the Cameron Library and spend some quality time with Schmadel and Wikipedia. So I bundled up and drove down to the University. It was -20°C with -30°C windchill, as I said before. I parked in one of the aboveground, unenclosed parkades. It cost $3.75 for the full day, which was $1.25 for each of three tickets from the machine because the booth was unmanned. I only had enough change for one of those, so I slogged down to the Student Union Building, which was open if mostly deserted, and got some change at the little convenience store in there. Then back to the parkade, buying two more tickets, walking up to where I was parked to stick them on the dashboard. Then to the library. Or so I thought.
The Engineering building, normally the first point of access to the "Science Complex" of buildings at the University, was locked. So I trudged down, with increasingly numb thighs, to the Central Academic Building, next entry point. Also locked. And there are signs saying something about things being closed between Christmas and New Year's. Fuck. I go down to Cameron's itself. Definitely closed, from December 23rd through to January 2nd. Double fuck. No sign of a haven from the freezing temperatures, and certainly no joy on the Schmadel front. I go back to SUB and sit and read a few stories from my book while feeling returns to my legs. I go back to the parkade, where I have used barely one of the three tickets I purchased. Then I drive back home, seething. I realize that there may be few students on campus in the Christmas season, but do they seriously have to shut down the entire bloody thing? I mean, I'm nobody, as far as the University is concerned--a not especially generous alumnus, maybe--but would department bigwigs have to deal with the libraries being shut down as well? Anyway, I'm sure there are good reasons, and I'm feeling more charitable now than I was on the 30th, not being in danger of freezing or anything. And I could have checked the web site, found out that everything was closed, and given up before even trying to go down there. I'm sure I would've felt mild disappointment, not much more, so half of it was just being made at my own shortsightedness.
Anyway. Today I checked the web site, made sure they were open, checked on the parking situation to see if there was anything better(no), and went down a little better prepared. The parkade was actually manned(still only $3.75), the buildings were all open(though not the SUB post office, where Nicole wanted me to try mailing some stuff for her), and the book was there at the library. I had to go to the circulation desk and get a little login code, not having an actual valid student ID any more, but that was it. At 2:00 I sat down to the work of entering the meanings of asteroid names. I started at 1500 because I figured most of the early ones would already be done, and I opened the book somewhere in that range.
You know, I'd always kind of suspected that while there are some cool asteroids out there, named after important scientists and musicians and stuff, most of them are named after trivial things. And it's true. As I understand it, there was a period of a few decades when they decided to stop naming asteroids at all, and when they changed their minds, they had a big backlog. Most of the asteroids I did today were discovered in the 1930's, but named in the 1970's, so I suspect a lot of them were from that backlog. They went through the various directors of the observatories where they were discovered, and astronomers working there, and their assistants, and their office staff, and their children and grandchildren and daughters-in-law. And their hometowns, and the rivers where they like to go fishing.
This is why I think it's unfair that I don't get to name asteroids. Because I could come up with lots of really cool names for them. Still working on the plan to end up in charge of the IAU Minor Planet Centre.
Anyway, it was 4:30 when I finished going through those 500 names, so about half an hour per hundred. I wondered if I was going to run out, but the book, despite being a couple of editions old by now, goes up to around 5000. This is the 1992 edition, I believe, and there's been tons more asteroids named since then. Though apparently, despite accelerating rates of discovery, they're not planning on speeding up the naming process. Well, maybe one day they'll get with the program and streamline the process, putting everything up on the Web instead of issuing Minor Planet Circulars(also pricy to subscribe to).
One thing I think is cool, though. They have a project called LINEAR which has discovered huge numbers of asteroids, in its search for Near-Earth Objects. This, of course, poses major problems for the asteroid naming process. Somebody had a brainstorm, though, which resulted in The Ceres Connection. Which is, basically, giving away asteroid names as prizes in science fairs, to teachers and to students. Yes, that's right, do well in a science fair and you could get an asteroid named after you! That would've been a great incentive for me, at any rate. (Never did any science-fair stuff when I was a kid. Too much work.) From a cursory inspection of the lists, it looks like it's not just a U.S. thing, either, because there's Chinese and Indian winners up there.
So that's something.
