I have not made a big deal of it yet, but the International Astronomical Union (IAU) have named an asteroid after me! Behold minor planet 314159 is now called "Mattparker".
https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/tools/sbdb_lookup.html#/?sstr=314159
I'm very excited and am filming a video all about it. But we have no visuals of Mattparker. It appears as a single pixel in observations like this:
So I'd love some "artist's impressions" of what Mattparker might look like. 3D renders, 2D sketches, elaborate watercolours - anything would be great! Send it over to [email protected] before we film on Monday 30 September.
As far as we know, Mattparker is a S class asteroid about 800m in diameter, but even that is speculative. Up until now it has been an insignificant member of the main asteroid belt, so we don't have a lot of observations of it.
I did speak to a light-curve expert who ran the numbers on what little data we have thus far, and this plot (with massive error bars) indicates Mattparker might have a rotation of about 100 hours and be slightly elliptical shaped. But until we get more observations, we really don't know much for sure.
All we do know for sure is that as soon as we have the technology to visit: you're all invited.