While awaiting confirmation that she has, indeed, discovered a new asteroid, a West Texas college student is, in a move that would make Mike Leach proud, hoping to name a cosmic rock after a make believe pirate ship.
Cisco College student Jessica Williams tells the Abilene Reporter-News she wants to name the asteroid the Black Pearl.
The Black Pearl is, of course, the ship Johnny Depp's pirate character captains in Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean" film series.
Williams, 19, is one of the students who might have discovered an asteroid through a program called IASC, International Astronomical Search Collaboration, created by Hardin-Simmons University math professor Patrick Miller.
Williams found the asteroid by examining a series of photographs taken with the Pan-STARRS telescope in Maui, Hawaii, and by noting subtle differences that may have been rocks moving through space.
Now that something has been spotted, it must be confirmed as an asteroid -- a process that can take several years depending on the object's orbit.
