During grad school, Jeroen Stil nearly had an asteroid named after him. Sadly, his last name, Stil, was too close to Still, an asteroid that had been previously named. Now, nearly 30 years later, asteroid 611064, or Jeroenstil, orbits our galaxy.
Dr. Jeroen Stil, an associate professor in Physics and Astronomy at the University of Calgary was nominated for the honour by Dr. Phil Langill, an associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy in the Faculty of Science and director of the Rothney Astrophysical Observatory.
They now both have asteroids in their name.
Asteroids are typically named by their discoverers, and in this case, astronomer David Balam — credited with hundreds of minor planet discoveries — had the naming rights for both asteroids after confirming their orbits.
Balam first went to Langill, honouring him with the name. Balam asked Langill if another UCalgary faculty member was worthy of the honour for his second asteroid.
“When Dave asked me if there was somebody in your department that I would like to nominate, I was recalling all of Jeroen’s great background in astronomical history and the cool things he’s done. I thought, ‘yeah, let’s, I’ll put forward Jeroen Stil.’ That being said, all of my colleagues in the department really are doing outstanding stuff like, unbelievable,” Langill said.
The pair is often in friendly competition. Langill thought that secretly nominating his colleague for the honour could finally be his opportunity to one-up his rival, without knowing Stil’s grad school story.
“He always bested me. It was so aggravating, like when something cool happened, or I saw something, or I discovered something, he always had me better. So, it kind of ticked me off a little bit, but it’s just kind of a friendly competition. I don’t even know if he knows that. In my mind, we have a competition going on. But I mean, he’s a really cool guy,” he said.
Stil was born and raised in the Netherlands and received his PhD at the University of Leiden before moving to Canada. Stil has been in Calgary since 2008.
A bio of the namesake, filled with information Langill did not have, is needed for the naming process. Stil said he was confused when Langill asked for his birthdate, but never thought it would be for the asteroid.
“He asked me for my birthday a while ago, but he wouldn’t say what it was for. So, I thought, ‘well, I don’t know, maybe they’re counting the days to my retirement,’” Stil joked.
Name in the stars
When Langill got the notice that their asteroid names were official, he couldn’t wait to share the news. Sadly, Langill was busy on campus while Stil was working from home.
Eventually, they got on a Zoom call, and Langill shared the news.
“I could just see his face drop and his eyes kind of bug out a little bit,” Langill said.
“I think it took him a minute to process what was going on. I didn’t know the story that he almost had an asteroid named after him already. That’s just another one of those examples of how he bugs me. I think I saw him wiping a couple of tears from his eyes a little bit because he was pretty slammed with the news that there was an asteroid. It was fun to see his reaction.”
Both asteroids, Langill and Jeroenstil, are far away and hard to spot and will stay that way for the foreseeable future.
“Space travel is a lot of fun. I liken it to a nice ride on a very scary roller coaster. I would be happy if somebody, sometime, took a close up image of it with a satellite or something that just happened to be passing by, just to get a glimpse of what it looks like up close, because right now, it’s just a dot on a telescopic image,” Langill said.
