8191 Mersenne
Encyclopedia
8191 Mersenne is an asteroid
Asteroid belt
The asteroid belt is the region of the Solar System located roughly between the orbits of the planets Mars and Jupiter. It is occupied by numerous irregularly shaped bodies called asteroids or minor planets...

 discovered 1993 July 20 by Eric Walter Elst
Eric Walter Elst
Eric Walter Elst is a Belgian astronomer and a prolific discoverer of asteroids, with over 3,000 discovered so far ....

 at La Silla Observatory
La Silla Observatory
La Silla Observatory is an astronomical observatory in Chile with three telescopes built and operated by the European Southern Observatory organisation, and several others are partly maintained by ESO...

, according to http://www.angelfire.com/id/ericelst/Citapla.html. It was named after Marin Mersenne
Marin Mersenne
Marin Mersenne, Marin Mersennus or le Père Mersenne was a French theologian, philosopher, mathematician and music theorist, often referred to as the "father of acoustics"...

 because 8191, the number of the object discovered, is sequentially the fifth Mersenne prime
Mersenne prime
In mathematics, a Mersenne number, named after Marin Mersenne , is a positive integer that is one less than a power of two: M_p=2^p-1.\,...

.

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