Astronomer Kazimieras Černis of Vilnius University in Lithuania has named seven Trojan asteroids after Lithuanian Olympians: Danas Pozniakas, Šarūnas Marčiulionis, Rūta Meilutytė, Mykolas Alekna, Daina Gudzinevičiūtė, Austra Skujytė and Romualdas Ubartas.
Most of these asteroids were discovered between 2009 and 2015 at observatories in Lithuania, Latvia and the Vatican. Trojans share Jupiter’s orbit around the Sun, and the International Astronomical Union allows this group to be named after Olympians.
Since 2004, Černis and his colleagues have named more than 160 asteroids, 110 of them with Lithuanian or Lithuania-linked names.
