ASTEROID NAMED AFTER OSCAR SAA

Recently the IAU Minor Planet Center announced the naming of an asteroid after Oscar Saa:  (105222) Oscarsaa = 2000 OS69
     Discovered 2000 July 31 by M. W. Buie at Cerro Tololo.
Oscar Miguel Saa Martinez (1942-2013) managed telescope operations at
Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory from 1982 to 2010, and kindly
      mentored generations of observatory staff and astronomers.
     
(105222) Oscarsaa is in the inner region of the main asteroid belt (semi-major axis 2.19 AU), in a slightly eccentric orbit (e = 0.09),  orbiting the Sun every 3.24 years. We're not sure what class of asteroid Oscarsaa is yet, so its reflectivity can only be guessed based on the properties of other main belt asteroids. Based on its absolute magnitude (16.2),and adopting a typical asteroid albedo of 0.12, (105222) Oscarsaa probably has a diameter of about 2.2 km, similar to the height of Cerro Tololo above sea level.
 
This was thanks to an initiative from Eric Mamajek (University of Rochester), former CTIO astronomer and Marc Buie (Southwest Research Institute, Planetary Science Directorate), the discoverer of this asteroid.

"Orbit diagram for asteroid (105222) Oscarsaa shown relative to the positions of the inner planets
and Jupiter (generated using Orbit Viewer applet written by Osamu Ajiki and Ron Baalke).
The orbit can be viewed interactively at the website:
http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=oscarsaa;orb=1;cov=0;log=0;cad=0#orb."

 
For more information, see: