You would expect asteroids, if they need to be named, to get labels like Apollo or Zeus. And they do. But who would have thought Frank Zappa was up there, zipping irreverently through the cosmic vacuum?
Then again, maybe that's not so surprising -- and perhaps why Ringo Starr makes the official list of Minor Planet names. John, Paul and George are there too, of course.
So who's behind all this folderol, this pop-culture naming of chunks of iron and rock -- some of which might one day collide with a planet, maybe even the pale blue one carving the third arc from the sun? Surely the scientists are not responsible.
"On the whole, we enjoy as many different things as the rest of the world and try not to take ourselves too seriously -- only seriously enough that we are still respected as the ultimate authority for names," says Michael A'Hearn, chairman of the International Astronomical Union's Small Bodies Names Committee.
The committee oversees the process of giving names to some of the nearly 12,000 such objects discovered to date. "Recognition of pop culture is not a problem for us any more than recognition of classical musicians, for whom lots of other asteroids are named."
"Classical music has been used quite a lot," according to Brian G. Marsden, secretary of the naming group. "The first one was Mozart. Bach, Beethoven and Brahms followed some years after that."
Marsden, an asteroid hunter himself, chose Duke Ellington to be immortalized in a semi-stable orbit around the Sun.
"I'm happy to see imaginative names," Marsden said with a level of enthusiasm that might hint at how little it takes to get some of these folks excited. After all, they sit around and stare at numbers, trajectories and fuzzy radar images all day long. "It doesn't have to be serious. If it is somewhat entertaining, that's great. Some of the best names are whimsical names."
Like Purple Mountain. Or Clapton. Or Colemanhawkins. The list seems endless, though only 60 percent of space rocks have been given names -- the nomenclatural process is woefully behind the more immediate and structured numbering convention. But only a near-endless list could combine travelling rocks (Acapulco and Africa, to name a couple in the A-section), just plain cool-sounding rocks (Pravdo, Protea and Pushkin) and of course, the inevitable homage to Asimov and Sagan.
Come to think of it, the alphabetical list of Minor Planet Names could serve as the perfect baby-naming resource for the space cognoscenti. Then again, there's Humperdinck. And Hippo. No word on whether these were of the whimsical variety or not.
Who picks the names?
So how are the names decided? In most cases, the discoverer makes a suggestion -- 16 characters or less and nothing offensive, please. Oh, and no pets (Rover and Fido are deemed less worthy than Zappa and Ringo, et al.) The suggested name, along with a brief defense of it, goes before the 11-person naming committee, which has the final say.
The official argument for putting Ringo on the list goes like this: He's "a Liverpudlian of lively personality and deadpan humor who occasionally sat in as drummer with The Beatles during their early days in Hamburg."
Definite material for the name of an orbiting object.
A host of concerns can flag a name. Confusing pronunciations or spellings are frequently rejected. After all, if an asteroid is found to be on a collision course with Earth, scientists want people of many languages to be able to recognize it.
Politicians and military notables have to be dead a while to get their name on a space rock.
"We have guidelines against this, until at least 100 years after the individual has died, but the names keep coming in," A'Hearn said. "In recent times these have included anti-Nazi activists and prominent politicians who have been active in civil rights. The basis of disallowing them is that even though most of us would agree that the person is deserving of honor, there are just so many cases near the borderline in which some would consider the name honorable while others would consider it offensive, that we just keep a rigid guideline."
But what about Jerry Garcia, and especially, what about this asteroid named Zappafrank? Marsden said both were chosen after campaigns organized by individuals. He said the push for Zappafrank resulted in more than 200 e-mails.
Aha! So we can name an asteroid?
"After 10 years have elapsed (from the time of discovery), it's fair game and almost anybody can propose a name," Marsden said.
So we checked. Madonna is not on the list. Elvis in not on the list. Even Ricky Martin has been overlooked, leading us to wonder if Marsden considered the likely flood of e-mail requests that will come now that the real truth behind the asteroid naming convention is out of the bag.
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