Asteroid named after Filipino neurosurgeon

Manila: Dr. Jose “Jett” Aguilar, a Filipino neurosurgeon, was honoured by global astronomy community with an asteroid being named after him.

Dr. Aguilar, a Manila-based paediatric neurosurgeon, is also an amateur astronomer. The asteroid measures about 8km-wide and is orbiting between Mars and Jupiter.

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) officially named asteroid 1993 FN41 as “7431 Jettaguilar” in abulletin issued by the IAU’s Small Body Nomenclature Working Groups.

Honoured

Aguilar was honoured as “a Filipino neurosurgeon who has saved over 1,000 children in the Philippines by volunteering his time and surgical expertise to treat their congenital malformations and brain tumours.”

“He is also an amateur astronomer and serves as vice president of the Astronomical League of the Philippines,” the bulletin read.

Dr Aguilar was former president of the Academy of Filipino Neurosurgeons. He currently works at the Philippine Children’s Medical Center, Philippine General Hospital, and Cardinal Santos Medical Center.

Discovery

Dr Aguilar has been practicing for more than 20 years in the Philippines. In 2019, he led a team who successful removal of a parasitic twin from a three-week-old infant called “Baby Ned”. He is also the clinical director of the Philippine Movement Disorder Surgery Center, a pioneer in deep brain stimulation surgery for patients afflicted with a rare genetic movement disorder in the Philippines.

Asteroid 7431 Jettaguilar was discovered on March 19, 1993, from the European Southern Observatory in La Silla, Chile, and was initially given the designation 1993 FN41, states a WGSBN Bulletin on May 14, 2021.

When not attending to his patients, Dr Aguilar spends his leisure time as an “astrophotographer” and runs a private home-based observatory. He has shared extraordinary photos of celestial bodies — the sun, the transit of Venus, lunar eclipses and other celestial events taken from have been published in spaceweather.com and skyandtelescope.org.

“I am really at a loss for words. Not even in my wildest dreams have I imagined having an asteroid named after me,” Aguilar told the Inquirer Friday (February 4, 2022).

It is believed he’s the first neurosurgeon who had received such an honour from the union.