As minor planet discoveries are confirmed, they are given a permanent number by the IAU's Minor Planet Center (MPC), and the discoverers can then submit names for them, following the IAU's naming conventions. The list below concerns those minor planets in the specified number-range that have received names, and explains the meanings of those names.
Official naming citations of newly named small Solar System bodies are published in MPC's Minor Planet Circulars several times a year.[1] Recent citations can also be found on the JPL Small-Body Database (SBDB).[2] Until his death in 2016, German astronomer Lutz D. Schmadel compiled these citations into the Dictionary of Minor Planet Names (DMP) and regularly updated the collection.[3][4] Based on Paul Herget's The Names of the Minor Planets,[5] Schmadel also researched the unclear origin of numerous asteroids, most of which had been named prior to World War II. Meanings marked with * are from legacy sources may not be accurate. This article incorporates public domain material from the United States Government document "SBDB".
The number 46610 translates to the hexadecimal B612 (the French "bé-six-douze" stands for "b-six-twelve"), the designation of the fictitious minor planet on which Saint-Exupéry's Little Prince lived
The RISE (Research of Interior Structure and Evolution of solar system bodies) project of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan aims to elucidate the origin and evolution of the Moon, planets and their moons mainly through geodetic approaches by space missions.
From 1974 to 2006, Anita Sohus (born 1951) undertook multiple roles on Voyager and Galileo in JPL's Outreach and Education Office, communicating NASA's science results to the science community and the public
Mount Tambora on the island of Sumbawa (Indonesia) is an active volcano that exploded in April 1815. It was the most powerful eruption in recorded history, and resulted in a brief period of significant worldwide climate change, including the "Year without a Summer" (1816).
Jay W. McMahon (born 1982) has carried out fundamental research on the dynamics and evolutionary behavior of binary asteroids. His work has laid the foundation for a rigorous understanding of the Binary YORP effect and the determination of material parameters of binary asteroids based on remote observations.
Suzan Edwards (born 1951) is the L. Clark Seelye Professor of Astronomy at Smith College. Edwards studies and has made significant contributions to the understanding of the formation of stars, the evolution of planet-forming disks, and the role played by disk- and stellar-driven winds during the early phases of stellar evolution.