Introducing the Asteroid Bolduc-Duval!
- Discover the Universe
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
Our director Julie Bolduc-Duval has had an asteroid named after her! This space rock is the size of a small mountain (about 600m across) and orbits the Sun as one of the many members of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
How did this happen?
David Balam chose to honour her career! As an astronomer in Victoria, BC. David makes regular use of the 1.8 metre telescope at the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory, located just outside the city and built more than 100 years ago. Julie worked at the observatory during the early 2000s where she learned a lot from David and his work. David spends many, many nights a year tracking and discovering asteroids to make sure none of them are on a collision course with the Earth. So far, he has discovered over 700 asteroids and tracked countless more! The good news: none of them are a threat for now!
When astronomers discover an asteroid, they can name it after people or places. Many of David’s friends and colleagues have had asteroids named after them. Julie received that honour last summer, when the official name was announced by the International Astronomical Union.
How are asteroids named?
When asteroids are discovered, they first get a provisional designation (series of numbers and letters) until their orbit is fully determined, and then it gets its permanent designation (number). To date, there are more than 800,000 numbered asteroids and many more are being tracked to determine their orbits more precisely. Once an asteroid has its permanent designation, it can also be given a name by the discoverer. Asteroid Bolduc-Duval is also known as 353817, and 2012 TV310 (provisional designation).
Would you like to discover asteroids with a Canadian connection (either discovered by Canadians or named for Canadian people or places)? Check out this list from the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.
How are asteroids discovered?
Just like planets, asteroids don’t emit their own light; they reflect the light of the Sun. Being very small, we see them as tiny points of light through telescopes. Because they move in the Solar System, the trick to finding them is to look at pictures of the sky taken some time apart and to identify if a point of light has moved relative to the other points of light (the stars in the background). This used to be quite a bit of work when it was only done through direct observation (eyes), but today computers make it much easier.
The video below shows this process but on a grand scale. The Rubin Observatory, which opened in 2025, has such a large field of view it can detect hundreds of asteroids per night!
Where is asteroid Bolduc-Duval now?
As of posting this blog, it is located 2.6 astronomical units from us, towards the constellation of Pisces (one astronomical unit is the mean distance between the Earth and the Sun). It’s very faint and cannot be seen with the naked eye or with a small instrument. But with planetarium programs such as Stellarium, we can see where it is at any given time. In February 2026, it appears to be close to the planet Saturn in the evening sky, looking west. So when she looks in that direction, Julie can imagine the big rock that bears her name, moving around the Sun at about 20km/s!
Could this asteroid hit the Earth one day?
No! It has a very stable orbit within the main asteroid belt, going around the Sun every 3.4 years. Its orbit is slightly eccentric, which means it’s not a perfect circle and its distance to the Sun varies during its year. At its closest, it will be over 100 million km to Earth —no chance of a collision!
If you are curious about how asteroids are catalogued and the data used to characterize their orbits, you can visit the official pages for asteroid Bolduc-Duval from the Jet Propulsion Lab/Solar System Dynamics and the Minor Planet Center from the International Astronomical Union.
