Asteroid 12566 Derichardson
At the Asteroids, Comets, Meteors 2002 meeting in Berlin I was honored to have an asteroid named after me! Its designation is 12566 Derichardson (also 1998 SH54 or 1978 EV9), most recently "discovered" by the LONEOS team on September 16, 1998 at Anderson Mesa Station.
Not much is known about the asteroid, except that it's probably about 10 km in diameter. However, orbital information along with a nifty visualization is available at JPL's NEO page.
Also, there's a nice writeup at the RASC's page on asteroids with a Canadian connection.
I'll add more information about 12566 Derichardson to this page as I get it!
Other faculty members and graduates of the department have had asteroids named after them. Check out the list! (Scroll to the bottom of the page.)
6/13/13: Matthew Knight sent me the following message and image: "It's cloudy at my comet right now, but not at derichardson, so here is an animated gif of it :) Note that it was setting so the seeing was crummy (airmass went from 3 to 4 during these images). The asteroid is just to the upper right of the center and moves a few pixels during the animation. Each image was 120 sec with the Hall 42" telescope at Lowell Observatory on 2013 June 13. The plate scale is 0.74 arcsec/pixel." Thanks Matthew!
