Albuquerque Journal

Asteroid Named for Professor
By John Fleck, Journal Staff Writer

An asteroid discovered with New Mexico Tech's modest campus observatory telescope has been officially named after one of the university's most distinguished scientists.
        Asteroid hunting is best done with big mountaintop telescopes that are specially designed to conduct asteroid surveys. But New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology astronomer Bill Ryan was peering through Tech's little campus observatory, located on the western edge of the university's Socorro campus, in 2003 when he spotted something unusual.
        Five years later, the International Astronomical Union has granted Ryan's wish to name the asteroid after Frank Etscorn, a former Tech professor. Etscorn developed the nicotine patch, and resulting patent has been a lucrative source of income for the university for decades.
        Asteroid "174801 Etscorn" is a small planetlike space rock that orbits the sun every three and a half years.
        Ryan said finding an asteroid with a small telescope like Tech's is rare.
        "With the big surveys running, this doesn't happen as often as it used to with small telescopes, but does still happen," he said.