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And Finally Artist News
Asteroid renamed in Freddie Mercury’s honour
By Andy Malt | Published on Tuesday 6 September 2016
Freddie Mercury had a blue plaque attached to his childhood home last week, and now he’s got an asteroid named after him. Though I don’t think they’ll be putting any blue plaque on that. Previously known as plain old Asteroid 17473, the lucky lump of rock was given a more rock n roll name to mark what would have been the Queen star’s 70th birthday yesterday.
The asteroid was formally granted its new moniker, Asteroid Freddiemercury, at an event in Switzerland. Joel Parker of the Southwest Research Institute said: “Freddie Mercury sang, ‘I’m a shooting star leaping through the sky’, and now that is even more true than ever before. But even if you can’t see Freddie Mercury leaping through the sky, you can be sure he’s there – ‘floating around in ecstasy’, as he might sing – for millennia to come”.
Queen guitarist Brian May, who was also at the event, posted a video on YouTube to announce the new name. Watch that here:
