Kudos to Doc Kinne and Gary Billings for their excellent work in helping establish minor planet (40463) Frankkameny. This is an example of the AAVSO in its finest form. Doc has been working on Dr. Kameny's recognition for years and it was a pleasure to get regular updates on him as his research and efforts slowly bore fruit (including his excitement when he finally met the guy). This was bookended by the excellent discovery of Dr. Kameny's dissertation in our archives by Matt Templeton and Gary Billings' thoughtful application of his hard-earned minor planet discoveries. It's cool stuff all around! Doc wrote a recent staff blog describing the story. And now the Washington Post has an article about it. I thought it would be appropriate to create a forum thread to celebrate the announcement and give kudos to the team that helped make this happen.
It's amazing and rather gratifying sometimes to realize the teamwork some things take. Sometimes no one even knows all the members of the team you're on.
For example, I found out this morning that Dr. Jane Rigby, Deputy Operations Project Scientist for the James Webb Telescope, was (40463) Frankkameny's Guardian Angel in the background. It turns out that the name had been rejected on political grounds in April of this year. Somehow Jane found out about that and went to bat for (40463) Frankkameny by sending an email to the Minor Planet Center, successfully reframing Dr. Kameny not as a political activist but correctly as a Civil Rights activist. During the June review the name of (40463) was looked at again, and this time it went through.