Space Asteroid named after Freddie Mercury

Kevin

Code Monkey
Staff member
On what would have been Freddie Mercury's 70th birthday comes news that asteroid has been named after the Queen front man. :cool:


The asteroid, nearly 500,000 million kilometers away, was discovered in 1991 by Belgian astronomer Henri Debehogne. It is an asteroid belt between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars. The new name of the asteroid will now be formally Asteroid 17473 Freddiemercury.

The announcement was made by Brian May who holds the distinction of being both a member of Queen and an astrophysicist in conjunction with the International Astronomical Union. "It's just a dot of light," said May in a YouTube video, "but it's a very special dot of light."

If you watch the Brian May announcement video above to the end you can see what the asteroid looks like in motion.
 
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