As a graduate student at Caltech, I had the amazing opportunity to work with the legendary Eugene Shoemaker, looking for new asteroids on Mount Palomar. My friend Ken Herkenhoff and I each were fortunate enough to discover one. We both named them after our eventual wives. I gave mine to my girlfriend, Tracie Rosberg, as a Valentine’s Day present in 1984. She married me. Living in Los Angeles at the time, I presented her with the framed parchment on the left, which shows its approximate size relative to the Los angeles Freeway system. I like to say that if you want someone to marry you, it helps to give them a minor planet. At an estimated diameter of 25km, Asteroid 3532 Tracie is larger than the moons of Mars.
