Contest to Name a Quasi-Moon

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What's a Quasi-moon

Right? What the heck are they? A quasi-moon of a planet is an asteroid that remains in the general vicinity of its planet. Unlike a moon, a quasi-moon doesn't orbit the planet itself but orbits the Sun, just with a path similar to that of the planet. If you want to learn more about quasi-moons, check out the Wikipedia quasi-satellite article.

BTW, if you have seen the latest news reports about Earth having a mini-moon for two months as asteroid 2024 PT₅ is captured by Earth's gravity, you might wonder about the difference between a mini-moon and a quasi-moon. See the Wikipedia quasi-satellite and temporary satellite articles for the details but basically quasi-moons have a (mostly) stable orbit and mini-moons don't. 

The Zoozve Story

I first learned about quasi-moons listening to a viral podcast episode about something called Zoozve. You should check out the Zoozve episode yourself, both for the full story and more details on this unique object, but the gist of it is that the co-host of Radiolab, Latif Nasser, was looking over a solar system poster bought for his son and noticed the name Zoozve, shown as a moon of Venus. Having never heard that Venus has a moon, he did his thing as an investigative reporter and learned that it was a quasi-moon. He also discovered that Alex Foster, the graphic artist who created the poster, had mistakenly shown the object's provisional designation, 2002VE (technically, 2002 VE₆₈) on the poster as ZOOZVE. Latif eventually pitched the idea of submitting the name Zoozve as the official name of 2002 VE₆₈ to Brian Skiff, the scientist who had discovered it. Brian submitted the name to the International Astronomical Union (IAU), the scientific body responsible for governing the names of astronomical objects,  and it was eventually approved. 

The Naming Contest

Orbital path for 2004 GU_{9
Click to enlarge}

Inspired by the naming of Zoozve, Radiolab and the IAU kicked off a contest this past May to name one of Earth's quasi-moons, the asteroid 164207 (2004 GU₉), as a way for the public to learn more about quasi-moons and the ways in which the naming process connects culture and science. You can read more about the contest here. There aren't many quasi-moons and only a few have official names, the rest just have a provisional designation, so it is pretty cool for the public to have an opportunity to suggest the name for one. 

The deadline for submissions is today so if you weren't already aware of the contest, there are only hours left if you want to make a submission. However, you can still participate as Radiolab and IAU will pick 10 finalists in October and then during November and December the public will be able to vote on which of these they think will be the best name for 2004 GU₉. The winning name will be announced in January, 2025. 

Getting Involved

As an amateur astronomer and STEAM advocate, the opportunity to be involved in naming an astronomical object really intrigued me. I've spent time off and on over the past few months working on this. First I had to come up with a name. It had to be from a mythological source (excluding types of names used for things like planets) and it couldn't have already been used as the name of another celestial object. The name I selected is Zephyrus. 

After coming up with the name, I had to draft a citation, the official description that will be recorded with the name, and a justification, my case for why they should choose my submission. Drafting those involved numerous rewrites. In the course of this I did leverage some online resources, even using AI for idea generation and suggestions on improving the writing, but ultimately the end result is my own work.  See below for what I submitted.

Name:	Zephyrus
Source:	Greek Mythology
Citation:	Zephyrus is the Greek god of the west wind, one of the four Anemoi, the wind gods. He symbolizes renewal, life, and the gentle forces of nature. This name was selected through a contest organized by the IAU and Radiolab to name a quasi-moon of Earth.
Rationale:	Zephyrus, one of the four Anemoi of Greek mythology, was the god of the West wind. Although generally associated with gentle breezes, Zephyrus also had a wilder side, sometimes referred to as stormy or ill-tempered. This dual nature, a balance between gentle influence and untamed power, is also reflected in the unique orbital properties of quasi-moon 2004 GU9. Its orbital path has a subtle grace and beauty yet represents possible danger, reflected in its classification as a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid. 2004 GU9 is held in its orbit by the Sun, echoing Zephyrus' struggle with Apollo, the Sun god. Both the wind god and the asteroid have been subject to the pull of a more powerful force. Just as Apollo won the affections of Spartan prince Hyacinthus over Zephyrus, the Sun dominates the movements of 2004 GU9. These parallels illustrate a delicate balance between autonomy and influence, where smaller entities make their way under the sway of greater powers. Both cases reflect struggle and equilibrium. Choosing the name Zephyrus for quasi-moon 2004 GU9 would pay tribute to the complexity and balance of Earth’s winds and of the movements of cosmic bodies. It would also honor the imaginative spirit of this naming contest. Just as the naming of quasi-moon Zoozve was the result of a creative spark flowing from discovery, Zephyrus is often associated with spring and growth, with the creation of the new.

If you're interested in learning more about Zephyrus, you can check out the Olympioi or Wikipedia articles on him for additional information.

Hopefully, my submission is selected as one of the finalists. If it does, I'll do a follow-up post with information on how to vote. I hope you'll consider voting for Zephyrus!

Whether or not Zephyrus ends up being chosen, it's exciting to be part of this naming process. 

I'd love to hear if you have an idea for a name for 2004 GU9, have feedback on Zephyrus as a name for it, if you have questions or comments on quasi-moons or if you have questions about how and why astronomical objects are named. Drop a note in the comments - let's chat! 

Star Trails over Georgia Strait, Vancouver Island

On a recent trip to Vancouver Island, staying on the coast of the Georgia Strait in Union Bay, we had a few days of crystal clear weather. On one of those nights I decided to try taking a star trail shot. Rather than taking one long exposure (as with film), my plan was to shoot multiple short exposures and merge them in post processing. Although the sky over the Georgia Strait is relatively dark (Bortle Scale 3), the Moon was nearly full so I followed the techniques outlined in this article about shooting star trails in light polluted skies. 

I set up my Nikon D750 and Irix 15mm lens in the backyard of our Airbnb, did some test shots, started the camera intervalometer and went to bed. About 6:30 in the morning, the sunlight streaming into the bedroom woke me and I decided to bring the camera inside before going back to bed. I was a little surprised the camera was still shooting as I'd started it before midnight and had assumed the battery would have died after 4 or 5 hours. 

When I took a look at the images captured that night, naturally the ones towards the end were all over-exposed; sunrise had been at 5:12AM. However, I also noticed that the sky never really got fully dark in any of the images. Consulting PhotoPills, it turns out that astronomical twilight that evening was from 11:18PM through 12:01AM and astronomical twilight the next morning was from 11:59PM the previous evening through 3:25AM. In other words, there was never a time when it was truly night (the time between twilights). Being located at almost 50 degrees north latitude and as it was a day before the summer solstice, summer nights there are really short!

This image is my first pass at post-processing and only covers about an hour and 45 minutes. Even still, it took about 4 hours of work to go through the images removing light trails from airplanes and satellites. I have more images to process, at least through 3:25AM (the start of nautical twilight) but besides having a higher number of airplane and satellite trails to edit out, those images also have a lot of ferry traffic on the strait, leaving long bright streaks of light along the waterline. I'll eventually work on those but for now I'm satisfied with what I have done so far. 

As you can see, shooting directly out over the strait involved having the camera aimed just a little east of due north. The small arc in the center of all the other concentric arcs is the star Polaris, the North Star.  The brighter star trails around it are from stars in constellations like Cassiopeia, Cepheus, Perseus and Cygnus. If you look closely, you'll see some color variations; not all the stars are white. 

One light streak I left in that isn't a star trail is on the far right. Blogger doesn't provide a way for you to zoom in but if you could you'd see a small meteor, a shooting star. 

Enjoy! Be sure to click on the image to see enlarged. 

Update: I've replaced the original image with a revised edit in which I blended a single foreground image for a more natural appearance. 

April 8th 2024 Total Solar Eclipse: Sungrazer Comet

Click to enlarge

Some news headlines leading up to the total solar eclipse last week suggested we might be able to see the "Devil Comet" (12P/Pons-Brooks) during totality, though with binoculars or a telescope, not naked-eye. We didn't see it but then we even forgot to use our binoculars to look at the eclipsed sun during totality much less remembered to use them to look for the comet.

I was asked whether the comet might appear in the photos I was taking with my telescope and my answer was, unfortunately no, it was well outside the field of view of my equipment. 

However, I was excited to see an article in my news feed late last night describing a comet passing close enough to the sun to fit in a telescopic field of view. Called SOHO-5008, it was a sungrazer, a comet passing so close to the Sun it would appear in coronagraph images by the SOHO solar satellite. This one had been identified in SOHO images the morning of the eclipse and several people found that they had captured it in their eclipse images. Later that day, it had burned up in the Sun. 

This morning, I pulled up my own images from totality and found that I had captured it, too! It took bumping up the exposure far more than I usually would but, once I did that and made a few other adjustments to bring out more detail, there it was. Here is an edit with labels similar to an image from my last post, noting some of the brighter stars visible from constellation Pisces and adding an enlarged inset for the comet. 

I may do another edit later on to balance out the overall image but i wanted to go ahead and share this now. 

Pretty cool, huh?