JILA Fellow Adjoint Peter Conti recently had a minor planet named after him.
JILA Fellow Adjoint Peter Conti now has his name among the stars -- or rather, among the celestial objects in our solar system. The International Astronomical Union has named an asteroid after Conti.
Astrophysicist Conti is known for his studies of hot luminous stars and the evolutionary connection between them. His work has studied O-type, Wolf-Rayet and Luminous Blue Variables.
As asteroids go, Minor Planet 25961 Conti is fairly average in size. The asteroid is 4.5 kilometers, about 2.79 miles, in diameter. Conti sits about 2.6 astronomical units from the sun, between Mars and Jupiter. The asteroid takes a little more than 4 years to make one trip around the sun, traveling in a pretty circular orbit.
The Physics Frontiers Centers (PFC) program supports university-based centers and institutes where the collective efforts of a larger group of individuals can enable transformational advances in the most promising research areas. The program is designed to foster major breakthroughs at the intellectual frontiers of physics by providing needed resources such as combinations of talents, skills, disciplines, and/or specialized infrastructure, not usually available to individual investigators or small groups, in an environment in which the collective efforts of the larger group can be shown to be seminal to promoting significant progress in the science and the education of students. PFCs also include creative, substantive activities aimed at enhancing education, broadening participation of traditionally underrepresented groups, and outreach to the scientific community and general public.