Vilnius University said on Monday it has named an asteroid after the late Jeronimas Ralys, a physician, translator, prose writer, and professor at the university in the Lithuanian capital, ahead of his 150th birth anniversary.
The asteroid was discovered in 2006 at the Molėtai Astronomical Observatory by Kazimieras Cernis and Justas Zdanavicius, scientists at the Institute of Theoretical Physics and Astronomy of Vilnius University's Faculty of Physics.
The discovery was confirmed in a scientific paper published in the journal Baltic Astronomy in 2016. US astronomers at the Mt Bigelow Observatory in Arizona later verified the object, which received its official designation in April that year. Its orbit was definitively established in 2019.
According to the university, the asteroid, named Ralys, is currently located in the constellation Scorpius as a 22.3 magnitude object.
It orbits the Sun at an average distance 2.55 times that of the Earth and completes one revolution in four years and 26 days.
Astronomers have classified the object as part of the Maria (MAR) asteroid family, a group of stony asteroids formed after the collision of a larger parent body with another asteroid.
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