Asteroid Kaler!

This animation shows Asteroid Kaler moving against the background stars. The images were taken about 95 minutes apart on May 12th, 2002.

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) has named asteroid 17851 for the University of Illinois' Professor Emeritus James B. Kaler. This honor was bestowed on Professor Kaler for his efforts in public outreach, wherein he has "worked tirelessly to educate planetarians, teachers, students, and amateur astronomers, always being available to answer their questions."

Asteroid (17851) Kaler (also known as asteroid 1998 JK) was discovered on May 1st, 1998 by the Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) project at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Only about 5-10 kilometers across (3-6 miles across), it is a very faint object in the sky. At its brightest, it is around 16th magnitude, about 10,000 times dimmer than the human eye can see; so, you'd need a good-sized telescope at a dark site to find it.

Asteroid Kaler orbits the Sun at, on average, 360 million kilometers (225 million miles), about 2.4 times farther from the Sun than the Earth. This places it between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, in a region known as the "Asteroid Belt", where many objects like it exist. The image below shows the orbit of the asteroid compared to that of the inner planets of the Solar System: Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars.

Currently, Asteroid Kaler is about 500 million kilometers (300 million miles) from the Earth. Its next closest approach to the Earth will be in mid-to-late January of 2005. There's no need to worry about a collision, however, as it never comes closer than 150 million kilometers (95 million miles) to the Earth.

The orbit of Asteroid Kaler compared to the planets of the inner Solay Sytem

Professor Kaler earned his A.B. at the University of Michigan, his Ph.D. at UCLA, and has been at the University of Illinois since 1964. His research area, in which he has published over 120 papers, involves dying stars. Professor Kaler has held Fulbright and Guggenheim Fellowships, has been awarded medals for his work from the University of Liège in Belgium and the University of Mexico, gave both the Armand Spitz Lecture to the Great Lakes Planetarium Association and the Margaret Noble Address to the Middle Atlantic Planetarium Society, and most recently was presented with the Campus Award for Excellence in Public Engagement by the University of Illinois. He has written for a variety of popular and semi-popular magazines, was a consultant for Time-Life Books on their "Voyage Through the Universe" series, appears frequently on Illinois television and radio, and has published several books, including "Stars and their Spectra," "The Ever-Changing Sky," and "Extreme Stars" (Cambridge), "Stars" and "Cosmic Clouds" (Scientific American Library), two textbooks, and "The Little Book of Stars" and "The Greatest Hundred Stars" (Copernicus). He is a current member of the Board of Directors of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, and is a past president of the Board of the Champaign-Urbana Symphony.

Image Credit: Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking Project, Near Earth Object Program