AN ARMY OF CLYDE TOMBAUGHS:

Three Racine sophomore students were notified on Monday that a celestial body they discovered during a science project had been verified as an asteroid.

The students at Racine’s Prairie School will be able to name the asteroid, temporarily identified as “2008 AZ28,” in about four years, according to the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Mass., the international authority on known objects in the solar system.

I actually wrote about this very phenomenon in An Army of Davids. Astronomical work that used to require a university is now routinely done by amateurs.