We will space rock you: Asteroid named after Queen’s Freddie Mercury

Enlarge (credit: Paul Natkin/Getty Images)

Today marks the 70th birthday of legendary Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, and to celebrate, an asteroid nearly half a billion kilometers away has been named after the late singer—quite the gift for the man who once sang of himself as "a shooting star leaping through the sky."

Queen guitar hero/astrophysicist Brian May, backed by the International Astronomical Union, announced that asteroid 17473—a 3.5km-wide ball of rubble currently located in the main Asteroid Belt between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars—will now be known as Asteroid 17473 Freddiemercury, in honour of "Freddie's outstanding influence in the world."

Discovered in 1991 by Belgian astronomer Henri Debehogne, the Freddiemercury asteroid loops around the sun at 20km per second. Its elliptical orbit never comes closer than 350 million kilometers to Earth, while its surface only reflects about 30 percent of the light that falls on it, making it difficult to see without the aid of a powerful telescope. "It's just a dot of light," said May in a YouTube video, "but it's a very special dot of light."