UGA has become the world’s first university to have a star system named after it, according to a report in onlineAthens.com.
According to the story, UGA and its Franklin College of Arts and Sciences received the honor after the Kepler mission — NASA’s first mission capable of finding earth-sized planets — confirmed in 2012 the existence of three new planets in the system known as Kepler-37.
This year, NASA authorized the nickname designation of this planetary system as UGA-1785, according to the story.
The announcement was made in a recent letter from NASA to Franklin College Dean Alan T. Dorsey.
Franklin College alumnus Roger C. Hunter presented the letter to Dorsey during a recent campus visit.
When Hunter became program manager for the Kepler mission in 2008, he began looking for ways to connect the mission with the public imagination and honor his alma mater, he told onlineAthens.
“It’s gratifying to know that the Bulldog nation now extends into interstellar space.”
Read more about the story in OnlineAthens.com.
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