UCLA Postdoctoral researcher Michael Busch has been honored with the naming of an asteroid by the International Astronomical Union. The naming was announced 2012 May 18 at the Asteroids, Comets, Meteoroids meeting in Niigata, Japan. Asteroid 8129 Michaelbusch is about 6 km in diameter, slightly eccentric, with an orbit in the inner part of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
The formal citation reads:
[quote type=”center”]8129 Michaelbusch: Discovered 1975 Sept. 30 by S. J. Bus at Palomar.
Named in honor of Michael W. Busch (b. 1987), a Jansky Fellow at the Department of Earth and Space Sciences of the University of California, Los Angeles. Busch is a radar astronomer who studies near Earth asteroids, with a particular interest in contact binary asteroids. [/quote]
The parameters of Michaelbusch can be found here:
http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=8129
Watch videos of Michael describing his research below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-LX9n1GhFc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-qNEgnzcyQ
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