Researcher Harch joins about a half-dozen other Cornellians whose names have been bestowed on celestial bodies. Harch is some 236 million miles from the sun, somewhere between the planets Mars and Jupiter. Calif. Gehrels shipped the plates from his survey to astronomers Kees van Houten and Ingrid van Houten-Groeneveld at the Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands. An asteroid, later dubbed 4896 P-L, was among them. Gareth Williams, the associate director of the Minor Planet Center, then calculated that 1997 HK12 and 4896 P-L were one and the same.
Astronomical tradition dictates that discoverers get first crack at naming a celestial object.
The IAU agreed to name hundreds of these objects. Yeomans served on the IAU naming committee and suggested names for six of the asteroids. Harch's was among them. Joseph Ververka, Cornell professor of astronomy and leader of NEAR imaging team, congratulates Ann Harch after she learned that an asteroid had been named for her. Clues came in the form of two radioactive elements never before seen together in such explosions, a rare event that offers a new avenue to test star explosion theories.