User talk:Jscotti

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Discover magazine, February 2000

1997 XF11, or should I say (35396) 1997 XF11... any plans to finally name it, or will it be a "1992 QB1" forever?

By the way I'm doing very brief bios of asteroid discoverers (see the subpages of List of asteroids such as List of asteroids/1-100 etc). I'm working on the historical ones first, should get to you at some point. Any biographical info you wish to supply (less detailed than a résumé, more like just the major discoveries and career and life highlights)?

Also, any details like what various Arizona folks' middle initals stand for (helps with disambiguation for articles).

Curps 20:05, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I don't have any specific plans to name (35396) 1997 XF11 at this time. I've gotten plenty of suggestions, but none of them have fit. To date, Spacewatch has not named any of our NEAs. We have discussed a couple of possible naming conventions, but we have not decided on any yet. Since it is a numbered asteroid, one should use the number in parenthesis as you have above - and that should be true of any numbered asteroid, whether it is (1) Ceres, (20000) Varuna, or an un-named asteroid like 1997 XF11.

As for biographical info, my full name is James Vernon Scotti. I was born in Bandon Oregon, USA in 1960. I graduated from Woodway Senior High in Edmonds Washington in 1978 and recieved a B.S. in Astronomy from the University of Arizona in Tucson in 1983. I have worked on the Spacewatch project ever since, writing the first automatic asteroid detection software for the project in 1984. I have recovered 63 comets starting in 1985 and confirmed the discovery of D/1993 F2 (Shoemaker-Levy) - also known as P/Shoemaker-Levy 9 which impacted Jupiter in July 1994. I've discovered many Near-Earth Asteroids including (35396) 1997 XF11. My research interests include the origin of comets, the dynamical evolution of comets and asteroids, the Near-Earth Asteroids, and the outer solar system. Asteroid (3594) Scotti is named for me.

Jim 18:05, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)

OK James Scotti is created, thanks.

Any bio info on Robert S. McMillan, by the way? That's very much a stub page.

Regarding the use of parentheses, it seems to be sort of a Wikipedia convention to just use 1 Ceres instead of (1) Ceres. This predates my involvement with Wikipedia, and it seems like a great deal of work to change it everywhere. I notice that some sites like http://www.hohmanntransfer.com/news.htm are likewise lazy and don't use parentheses. Curps 19:00, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)