City of Elko receives its own cosmic twin

The next time someone says he's from Elko, look for pointy ears. He just must might be an alien.

That's because there are two Elkos, the city billing itself "the heart of northeastern Nevada" and the asteroid.

The Wild West town was founded in the 19th century. The asteroid was found in 1999 by Tooele County residents Patrick Wiggins and Holly Phaneuf.

As co-discoverers, they were given the right to name the asteroid, and Wiggins chose the name of the town where he was born.

"It was discovered quite by accident," said Wiggins, NASA solar system ambassador to Utah.

The two were tracking a known asteroid by telescope to help refine its orbit. In the photos he took that night in 1999, the asteroid can be seen near the center of the frame. It has clearly moved between the time the first image was taken and when the second was made a few minutes later.

"That's the one we were actually looking at," Wiggins said, referring to a point of light near the center of the photos.

But while studying the photos, "we noticed that up in the corner ... was something else moving." That other object is much dimmer, a magnitude 18 dot near a bright star near the upper left corner of the pictures.

Finding no record of an asteroid at those coordinates, the discoverers reported the sighting to the Minor Planet Center, part of the International Astronomical Union. The union, based in Paris, is the body that recently demoted Pluto from planet to "dwarf planet" status.

At first, Wiggins and Phaneuf, who is a college chemistry and biochemistry professor and author, were not certain that it was a new asteroid. "There are many asteroids that are found and then lost," he said. "They do make you wait until they're sure."

The discovery must circle the sun twice before the orbit is well-enough established to be checked against other known space rocks. In this case, the orbital period of the 1 or 2 kilometer asteroid is about 41 months. Twice that is 82 months, or nearly seven years.

That period has rolled around since 1999, and the IAU has decided the asteroid is, indeed, a new discovery. "I got notification earlier this year that it had finally been numbered," the indication that it was new.

Wiggins submitted the proposed name. Then came the IAU's famous meeting in Prague, where Pluto was the main topic. So much attention was focused on that oncoming debate "that the naming stuff all got sidetracked for a short time."

Around the same period Pluto was being reclassified, he added, "Elko was accepted."