Growing up in Cherpulassery, a small town in Palakkad, Kerala, in the ‘90s, Aswin Sekhar had access to pristine night skies. Light pollution was less. So, staring at the vast expanse of stars overhead, twinkling like precious gems, left an indelible mark on young Aswin’s impressionable mind. Back then, he did not know a celestial object would bear his name in the future.
In June, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) named an asteroid after Aswin, 38, to honour his contribution to the field of meteors in meteoroid stream dynamics. The asteroid, discovered in 2000 by the Lowell Observatory Near-Earth-Object Search programme (funded by NASA), will be called (33928) Aswinsekhar = 2000 LJ27.
Aswin apart, three other Indians — astronomer Kumar Venkataramani, senior flight dynamics engineer Ashok K. Verma, and planetary geologist Rutu Parekh — also had asteroids named after them. They join an elite group of Indian scientists like Srinivasa Ramanujan, Subramanyan Chandrasekhar, CV Raman, Vikram Sarabhai, and Vainu Bappu, who have had the same honour. Other eminent Indians like Mohandas Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore and Viswanathan Anand also have minor planets named after them. But that is through a “ceremonial nomenclature”, wherein the discoverer of the celestial body can name it after the IAU nomenclature committee’s approval. In the “non-ceremonial nomenclature”, accomplished individuals in the field of astrophysics nominate a fellow scientist for the IAU’s consideration to have a minor planet named in their honour. Aswin and the other Indians were honoured through the second process.
