A large asteroid has been named after Alejandro Jodorowsky, the cult Franco-Chilean filmmaker and science-fiction comics writer who later became a spiritual guru.
The Minor Planets Centre, a branch of the International Astronomical Union (IAU), has listed asteroid 261690 Jodorowsky at the request of a French astronomer who spotted the five-kilometre-wide object more than seven years ago. The discoverer is Jean-Claude Merlin, who has several other “minor planets,” as large asteroids are called, on his list of sightings.
“I detected it on the evening of Christmas Eve in 2005, using an 80-centimetre telescope in Arizona that I direct over the Internet from my home,” Merlin was quoted on Tuesday as saying in a press release by Les Humanoides Associes, Jodorowsky’s French publishing house.
Several years of observation are needed to confirm a discovery and calculate its orbit, enabling it to be enshrined in the IAU’s list.