La Orotava presented this Wednesday, November 3, 2021 the 18th edition of its Science Fair with the announcement of a story that had gone as unnoticed as a shooting star on a cloudy day. Czech astronomers Jana Tichá and Milos Tichy discovered asteroid 53093 on December 28, 1998 in the Kle Observatoryt, in the Czech Republic. In January 2002 they participated in the international scientific meeting Comets in the post-Halley era, on Cross port, and on their visit to Tenerife they discovered a “pleasant and fascinating” town: La Orotava, and they wanted that name to travel into space, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, to give a name to a large space rock 5 kilometers in diameter. The International Astronomical Union published in March 2004, just a year after the first edition of the science fair, the official naming of asteroid 53093 as the asteroid La Orotava, a large rock that takes 3.22 years to go around the Sun.
Juanjo Martin, creator and organizer of the Science Fair, explains that his objective was for the astronomer Jana Tichá to act as godmother of this edition, “but the situation of the pandemic in Czech Republic it has prevented it. The scientist did want to participate with a video in which she narrates how the choice of the name that led to La Orotava at between 1.4 and 3.2 astronomical units of distance from Earth, which is equivalent to between 210 and 480 million kilometers.
The exhibitions, talks and workshops will take place between 10:30 and 18:30, with limited capacity
In his video, Tichá recalls that there are «thousands and thousands of asteroids that orbit around the Sun and only one of them bears the name of La Orotava. An asteroid or minor planet is a small rocky body in the solar system that orbits the Sun. And most of them move within the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, ‘as is the case with La Orotava.
Tichá decided to give the name of the Villa to one of its discoveries from the Klet Observatory for being “a pleasant and fascinating Canarian town”. The proposal was approved by the International Astronomical Union and officially published in the Minor Planet Circular Number 51,190 of March 6, 2004.
The mayor of villero, Francisco Linares (CC), highlights the importance of “an asteroid bearing the name of La Orotava, an honor that I don’t think any other municipality of our characteristics in Spain shares and that allows us to pass on to posterity.
Linares announces that from now on proposals will be analyzed to create somewhere in the municipality a reminder of the existence of the asteroid La Orotava and its characteristics. For now, this rock larger than a meteorite and smaller than a planet will be one of the protagonists of the XVIII Science Fair, which returns to the face-to-face format, after the virtual edition of 2020. It will be held this Sunday, November 7, 2021 in Carrera Escultor Estévez street with capacity limited to 200 people, between 10:30 am and 6:30 pm.
A dozen stalls
The 18th La Orotava Science Fair this Sunday will feature a dozen stalls from different entities and themes: light, lenses and vision, from Fundoro; samples and treatments of vectors and parasites from the Institute of Tropical Diseases; solar observation and solaroscope, from Cassiopeia; computational thinking; sampling and classification of microplastics on beaches, from the Group for the Evaluation of the Impact of Emerging Pollutant Microplastics on the Coasts of Macaronesia; rocket launch, by Teide Sat; astronomy, from the Museum of Science and the Cosmos, or coastal dunes, from the Group of Physical Geography and Environment of the ULPGC
There will be demonstrations, experiments, talks, children’s games, magic and numerous activities organized by the different participating institutions and entities. On the center stage Lokociencia will offer two sessions of Terrifying Science Experiments, at 11:00 and 17:00; the ULL mathematician Ignacio García will give the talk There are ten types of people (at 12:00 hours), and Involcan technicians will report on the situation of the volcanic eruption of La Palma, from 1:00 p.m.
Collaborate with this edition the Canarian Orotava Foundation for the History of Science, Youth for Research in Tenerife, the Institute of Tropical Diseases, the Cassiopeia Cultural Classroom of the ULL, the San Isidro Salesian school with a 3D printing workshop, the Cultural Classroom of Computational Thinking, TeideSat, the Museum of Science and the Cosmos, or the ULPGC.
