2675 Tolkien

 

One of the more pleasant surprises I love receiving is the shock of synchronicity. I’ll see something in one area I’m interested in that will instantaneously correspond to another seemingly unrelated area of study. A synchronicity event just happened to me last night.

If you’ve been reading the last couple of posts, you’ll note that I’ve gotten the itch to read some Tolkien again. I decided to re-read The Lord of the Rings beginning on March 1, once I’m finished with the current epics I’m working my way through. You’ll also note that while out shopping last Sunday in preparation of the blizzard I bought the current copy of Astronomy magazine on a whim. It’s become a pleasant habit to read an article or two in bed before lights out every night this week.

Last night I read an article that mentioned asteroids, and I looked up the entry on asteroids in Wikipedia on my cell phone. Skimming through it I see a link for notable asteroids. I click on that and soon it’s revealed that, out there some two hundred million miles distant, is an asteroid floating in the inner region of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, called 2675 Tolkien.

2675 Tolkien!

Normally, an asteroid is designated by a number and a name. The number originally was assigned in the order of discovery. Thus, the first asteroid discovered over two hundred years ago is known as 1 Ceres. Since over 100,000 asteroids have been discovered to date, I assume this numbering convention has been modified. Anyhoo, the discoverer is allowed to choose a name, which is then either approved or rejected by the International Astronomical Union.

2675 Tolkien was discovered on April 14, 1982, by British astronomer Martin Watt. It orbits the Sun every 1,202 days, and rotates about itself once every 44 days. A lumpy potato thing with dimensions something like 6 miles by 7 miles, it resembles, to my mind as I can’t find a photo of it anywhere, to be something like a rocky Rubik’s cube. It tumbles rather than rotates. It’s dark and has an absolute magnitude of 12.2, which means it can’t be seen by human eyes. You’d need something 100,000 times more powerful, like a 12” telescope.

I’ve read in several places (might be the same citation) that “Tolkien” was chosen because of the author’s lifelong interest in astronomy. I’m not so sure of that, never having read or heard of it before. There’s not much astronomy in his legendarium. So it seems to me the naming was more likely fan tribute. About a week after 2675 Tolkien was discovered Mr. Watt discovered another asteroid. It’s now known as 2291 Bilbo.

This is not 2675 Tolkien, but this is what it looks like in my mind ...