Contact: Sarah Nicholas
STARKVILLE, Miss.—A Mississippi State University faculty member has made a celestial discovery in Starkville: the first asteroid identified from the state of Mississippi.
Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences Jean-Francois Gout, an amateur astronomer in his spare time, recently became the official discoverer of a new asteroid, “(826856) Commodorecochran,” which he named in honor of Commodore Shelton Cochran (1902–1969), the first MSU athlete to win an Olympic gold medal. Cochran, a 1923 MSU alumnus, graduated when the university was known as Mississippi A&M.
Cochran ran the first leg of Team USA’s 4×400-meter relay team at the 1924 Paris games—creating a meaningful tie for Gout.
“The discovery was just over 100 years after the gold medal, and he won his medal at the Olympic games in Paris,” said Gout, a native of France. “I thought it was an even stronger connection to name the asteroid for a Mississippian who won their medal in my home country.”
The discovery was confirmed by the Minor Planet Center, the world’s official authority for verifying new asteroid findings and operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. After confirmation, Gout proposed a permanent name to the International Astronomical Union, or IAU, which oversees the naming of celestial bodies. The asteroid belongs to a group known as Jupiter Trojans, which share Jupiter’s orbit around the sun.
Traditionally, Jupiter Trojans have been named for heroes of the Trojan War. As discoveries increased, the IAU expanded the naming rules to include Olympic and Paralympic athletes.
Only about 7,000 of the currently 1.5 million known asteroids belong to the Jupiter Trojan family.
“Most asteroids orbit between Mars and Jupiter in what’s called the main belt,” Gout said. “But this one is on the same orbit as Jupiter. If someone were to look toward Jupiter and then follow the ecliptic—essentially the plane of the solar system—about 60 degrees to the east, they’d be looking in the general direction of where the asteroid is. That would be in the constellation Virgo for the 2025-26 winter. But don’t expect to see anything! It is so faint that only long exposures with at least a 10-inch telescope can detect it.”
Gout made the discovery this past January, shortly before the upcoming launch of the Vera Rubin Observatory, with its automated surveys expected to end the era of amateur asteroid discoveries.
“I started hunting for new asteroids in October 2024,” Gout said. “There was a short window left for amateurs to find regular asteroids before the Vera Rubin Observatory came online. I felt like I had to do it.”
Using his own 11-inch telescope and a small observatory he built in his Starkville backyard, Gout captured multiple images of a star field and used specialized software to detect objects moving against the background stars. After comparing the object’s motion to a database of 1.5 million known asteroids, his findings were submitted to the Minor Planet Center, which confirmed the asteroid as a new discovery after more images from professional observatories allowed the precise calculation of the asteroid’s orbital parameters.
“When I realized this one would be credited to me, I couldn’t believe my luck,” Gout said. “It’s a huge personal accomplishment, and I’m proud that it’s the first asteroid discovered from Mississippi.”
Though the find is not expected to influence planetary science, Gout said the recognition is meaningful both personally and for the state.
“It’s nice to help put Mississippi on the map of places where astronomy discoveries happen,” he said.
While Gout’s professional research focuses on evolutionary biology, he is active in amateur astronomy and combines work with his hobby by developing and teaching an astrobiology class at MSU. His image, “At the Shadow’s Edge,” was featured as NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day in 2021 and he often participates in public stargazing events at MSU’s Howell Observatory.
More of his astrophotography can be viewed at www.jfgout.com.
For more information about MSU’s College of Arts and Sciences, visit www.cas.msstate.edu.
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