The planets and moons in our solar system all get names, even most comets do, but smaller bodies such as asteroids rarely get the honor. Still, one asteroid in the main asteroid belt recently got christened with a rather peculiar name: Wikipedia. The asteroid got the name in honor of the site's contributions to world knowledge and its importance to science and humanity. The rock is one to two kilometers in diameter, around a mile, a decent size for an asteroid.
The
asteroid's official designation is 274301 Wikipedia, it only carried the 274301 number until now. It was also provisionally called 2008 QH24, 2007 FK34 and 1997 RO4.
It was discovered by a Ukrainian team of astronomers and the name was suggested by Andriy Makukha, a board member of Wikimedia Ukraine.
It's nice to see Wikipedia get some of the recognition it deserves, but it's going to make for some interesting search results, try Googling "Wikipedia asteroid" and see what you get.
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