17.07.2010 [News]

Uzbek astronomers discover new minor planet

A previously unknown minor planet with a four-year rotation period around the Sun was discovered by Uzbek astronomers in 2007 and officially included in the International Minor Planet Catalog under the number 210271. The planet has been given the name Samarkand.

"That was the first planet of this kind discovered in Uzbekistan", Shuhrat Egamberdiyev, director of Mirzo Ulughbek Astronomy Institute, said in an interview. The revelation served as a convincing testimony to the considerable progress made by Uzbek astronomers throughout independence years. At the request of scientists, President of Uzbekistan Islam Karimov named the planet after one of the world’s greatest cities – Samarkand. The title was approved by the Minor Planets Center of Harvard International Astronomical Union. The center informed the global academic community of the news in a respective circular. 

In different times, international scientists had named five minor planets in honor of our eminent scientists in recognition of the latter’s marvelous merits. By acknowledging the pioneers, the scholars entitled them Uzbekistania, Avicenna, Ulughbek, Beruni and Khorezmi.

The latest discovery in Uzbekistan was made at Maydanak Astrophysics Observatory of the Astronomy Institute, located high in the mountains 120 kilometers from Samarkand. The success was the outcome of the hard work by young scientists Bahodir Hafizov and Aleksei Sergeyev. They exposed the minor planet during one of the cool nights of October 2007 while monitoring the sky with the principal observatory telescope AZT-22 with a unique mirror of one-and-a-half meters in diameter. The researchers noticed a faintly luminous object moving in the background of still stars. They determined its coordinates and calculated the preliminary elements of the orbit. The data was sent to the Minor Planet Center who informed the lucky astronomers that that object had not been listed in catalogs, and was given a preliminary number. It took them two more years of scrupulous research to specify the orbit of the unknown item to have the Minor Planet Center confirm the discovery of the Uzbek scholars.

The minor planet Samarkand rotates around the Sun between Mars and Jupiter orbits as part of the so-called asteroid belt. Asteroids are solid astronomical bodies containing iron, chondrites and some other chemical compounds. Studying asteroids has been of paramount scientific value because their substance, unlike that of major planets, did not participate in evolutionary processes and remained as they were in the early periods of the solar system’s formation.

The Maydanak observatory located in the center of the Eurasian continent, with its excellent astronomical climate to observe cosmic bodies, is planned to be included into the network of ground observatories studying the Wilson-Harington comet. Japanese scientists are going to send their exploring spacecraft there. Uzbek scientists together with their colleagues from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan continuously monitor asteroids in the Maydanak observatory. 

Source: http://www.ut.uz/eng/today/new_planet_named_samarqand.mgr