[Late British sci-fi author
honored after cosmic campaign.

Douglas Adams, was the author of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," a cult science-fiction comedy. He died suddenly after a heart attack in 2001 at the age of 49.]

[One prospect stood out: an asteroid given the provisional designation 2001 DA42, discovered by the Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research project, or LINEAR. It's a relatively unremarkable space rock, orbiting 223 million miles (357 million kilometers) from the sun in the main asteroid belt, between Mars and Jupiter. But its name held triple significance.

Not only did it memorialize the year of Adams' death (2001) and his initials (DA), but it also referenced the number 42 — which is absurdly meaningful in the "Hitchhiker" saga as the "answer to the Ultimate Question." (The problem was, no one ever knew precisely what the Ultimate Question was.)]

[Asteroid Douglasadams was among the 71 newly named celestial objects announced Tuesday by the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Mass.]

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I thought of Johnny Carson, who advocated astronomy when the topic arose as a current event on his tv show. Ed McMahon mentioned (on Larry King Live) that Carson still looked through his telescope on a regular basis after he retired.