The right to name an asteroid belongs to the person who finds it.

Yukio Shinohara discovered the rock in autumn, twenty-two years ago. He was working at a small private observatory deep in the mountains of Nagano, developing film by hand and comparing it frame by frame against the previous night’s exposures. Automated detection didn’t exist yet. When he spotted something new, he filed the provisional designation with the MPC — the Minor Planet Center — and received a single confirmation email in return. That was it.

It took several years for the orbit to be confirmed. In the meantime, Shinohara changed jobs, outlived his wife Masako, and had eye surgery twice. He kept observing at the observatory, but the number of nights he spent outside dwindled.

Naming rights don’t expire. Twenty-two years after the discovery, the rock catalogued as 2001 AK37 was still waiting for Shinohara to give it a name.

The doctor told him it was pancreatic cancer at the beginning of March. Shinohara spent seven days in the hospital and went home without having surgery.

“I have something I need to do,” he told his daughter Chie, and left.

That night, he opened his laptop. The IAU — the International Astronomical Union — naming submission form was in English. He worked through it with a dictionary, one field at a time, taking the better part of an hour. In the name field he typed fourteen letters. In the remarks box, he wrote:

In memory of Masako Shinohara, who first taught me to look at the night sky.

He hit submit. A confirmation email arrived, noting that review would take several months.

Shinohara closed the screen and went to the kitchen to make tea. When Masako was alive, it was always roasted barley tea — hojicha. He still drank the same thing. There was no reason to change.

The following week, his daughter Chie came to visit.

“Dad, there’s a confirmation email here from the IAU — what is this?”

“I named a rock.”

“A rock?”

“An asteroid. I found it twenty-two years ago.”

Chie opened his laptop. She looked at the submission form for a while without speaking.

“That’s Mom’s name.”

Shinohara drank his tea.

“No.”

“What? It says Masako. Mom was Masako Shinohara, so — wait, her maiden name?”

“Read it.”

Chie read the remarks field. Who first taught me to look at the night sky.

“Mom’s… mom?”

Shinohara nodded.

“Grandma was also named Masako?”

“Your mother got her name from her mother. The original Masako taught me the constellations one by one when I was a student.”

Chie shifted in her chair.

“I didn’t know that. I never met her.”

“She died before you were born. Your mother hated sharing a name with her own mother — she always made people call her Maa-chan. So you never heard it.”

Chie looked at the form again.

“So you didn’t name it after Mom.”

“I named it after my mother-in-law. The person who taught me to look at the sky. It just happens to be the same characters.”

Shinohara set down his cup.

“But you can read it however you like. If you want to think of it as your mother’s name, that’s fine too.”

Chie started to say something, then stopped. Instead she refilled his tea.

Yukio Shinohara died seven weeks later. The IAU approved the submission four months after that.

Asteroid 2001 AK37 was officially named Masako.

When Chie opened the approval email, she didn’t cry. Instead she pulled an old photo album out of the closet — her mother’s. There was one photograph of grandmother and mother together. Her mother looked about three years old, held in her grandmother’s arms, pointing up at the night sky.

On the back, in her grandmother’s handwriting, a date and a single line:

Maa-chan finds Orion.

Chie propped the photo against the wall and closed her father’s laptop. She made a pot of hojicha, then opened the window. An April breeze came through.

Out there, 2001 AK37 keeps circling the sun — far beyond the reach of any photograph or album, carrying the name of two women named Masako.