Named to commemorate the centenary of The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. Incorporated in 1890 under the name The Astronomical and Physical Society of Toronto, the RASC received the Royal Charter¹ in March 1903. Its Journal has been published continuously since Volume 1 in 1907. The members of the Society have always included both professional and amateur astronomers. The masthead of the Journal reads "devoted to the advancement of astronomy and allied sciences." Citation prepared by the Council of the RASC at the request of the discoverer.

Orbit type: Main Belt Asteroid 

Reference: MPC 16247

¹ In fact, the RASC was never granted a Royal Charter, or letters patent for its use of the appellation "Royal". In January of 1903, the Toronto Astronomical Society (TAS), as it then was, petitioned the crown for the privilege to style itself the "Royal Astronomical Society of Canada". The following month a dispatch from the Marquess of Ripon, Colonial Secretary, to the Earl of Minto, Governor General of Canada, stated that King Edward VII graciously granted the Society's request. The change became legal less than three months after the original petition, when the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas Division of the High Court of Justice for Ontario, Sir William Ralph Meredith, approved the Society's application. The Under Secretary of State for Canada, Joseph Pope (KCMG 1912), a member of the Toronto Astronomical Society, may have played a leading role within government circles to effect the change; a letter from Pope appears to have been the only "official" notification the Society received that their petition was successful. We do have an early charter from 1900, but there is nothing royal about it. For more information see Broughton Looking Up, p. 5, and the page devoted to this question.