My top ten:

1. 2005 FY9

Location: Classical belt
Estimated mass: unknown
Semi-major axis: 45 AU
Nickname: Easterbunny

Notable features: Albedo as yet undetermined, but very, very large. Possibly as large as, or even larger than, Pluto.

2. 2003 EL61

Location: Classical Kuiper belt
Estimated mass (10²⁰ kg): 41-43
Semi-major axis: 43 AU
Nickname: Santa

Notable features: Rotates in only 4 hours, which has elongated it to a cigar shape. Two moons. Larger than Sedna, Orcus or Quaoar.

3. 2004 XR190

Location: Scatterd Disc
Estimated mass: 0.6–4.8
Semi-major axis: 57 AU
Nickname: Buffy

Notable features: Possesses an orbit that is nearly circular, yet also nearly perpendicular.

4. 2000 CR105

Location: Beyond.
Estimated mass: unknown, but diameter only 265 km
Semi-major axis: 219 AU
Nickname: none

Notable features: Like Sedna, exists in the region too far for its orbit to have been affected by Neptune's migration.

5. 2002 TC302

Location: resonant Kuiper belt
Estimated mass: unknown, but diameter less than 1200 km
Semi-major axis: 55 AU
Nickname: none

Notable features: by radius, larger than Ceres

6. 2002 TX300

Location: Classical kuiper belt
Estimated mass: unknown, but diameter roughly 700 km
Semi-major axis: 43 AU
Nickname: none

Notable features:by radius, one of the largest objects beyond Neptune.

7. 2002 UX25

Location: Classical Kuiper belt
Estimated mass: 7.9
Semi-major axis: 42.5 AU
Nickname: None

Notable features: As large as named KBOs Varuna and Ixion. One moon

8. 2002 AW197

Location: Classical Kuiper belt
Estimated mass: unknown, but diameter of roughly 750 km
Semi-major axis: 47.5 AU
Nickname: none

Notable features: well, it's reddish. It's also larger than named KBO Chaos.

9. 1996 TL66

Location: Scattered disc
Estimated mass: 2.6
Semi-major axis: 82 AU
Nickname: none

Notable features: larger than named KBO Chaos; been around for ten years and no one's given it a proper name

10. 2002 MS4

Location: Kuiper belt
Estimated mass: Unknown, but diameter roughly 1300 km
Semi-major axis: 42 AU
Nickname: none

Notable features: one of the brightest KBOs


So. Will all these bodies get names? And what would you name them?

__________________
I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet, so who am I to judge?

It's gotten to the point where careful investigation is needed just to tell parody from reality. I think that means reality is broken.- Noclevername.

Has there been any suggestions made for names for 2005 FY9 or 2003 EL61? When do you think they might be named?

__________________
"Mars is essentially in the same orbit [as earth]....Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe." -Dan Quayle

If they become dwarf planets, I guess the names come from the Greco-Roman mythology (since Ceres, Pluto, and Eris are all Greco-Roman deities).

__________________
Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

0. 1992 QB1

Location: Classical belt
Estimated mass: unknown
Semi-major axis: 44 AU
Nickname: none

Notable features: The first Kuiper Belt object (after Pluto and Charon). The original "cubewano" (QB1).

This object was found in 1992 and still remains unnamed. The discoverers David Jewitt and Janet Luu suggested the name "Smiley" (!), but the proposal was rejected since it was already assigned to a main belt asteroid. After the numbering, the discoverers have ten years to suggest the name for this object. After that, anyone can suggest a name.

__________________
Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

The naming of 2003 EL61 may be problematic since it is not clear who found the object. The Ortiz team first reported the discovery to the Minor Planet Center and informed the public which makes them eligible to propose the name. However, Brown accuses them for stealing the discovery because they could have found the object using observation logs of Brown's team. Ortiz et al. deny this. According to Ortiz, they discovered it independently and only checked if it was the same object studied by Brown's team. I don't think there's any way to prove it either way.

__________________
Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

I think they should be named after beings of the darkness like Pluto and Eris (but not necessarily Greek). A few ones: Hecate, Cerridwen, Lilith, Morgana, Ereshkigal, Arianhrod, Durga, Inanna, Tiamat...

__________________
"As truth is gathered, I rearrange,
Inside out, outside in - Perpetual change." - A British rock band

Brown was tracking 2003 EL61 for 6 months before mentioning it in an abstract for an upcoming conference. Ortiz's group then googled Brown's data and announced their discovery. It looks kind of bad. If Ortiz had been tracking it as well as Brown, they likely rushed their announcement to gain precedence over Brown. It's ethically shady, if you ask me.

I think whoever spotted it first will get credit. Perhaps Ortiz has observation logs of 2003 EL61 that precede Brown's, and he has just mysteriously chosen not to let anyone know about them.

__________________
"Barbarism is the natural state of mankind. Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always ultimately triumph" -- Conan

Alright, how about "Flatulence", since its discoverers appear to be in the midst of a decade long brain fart.

__________________
I'm not completely heartless, the doctor who removed it told me he'd never be able to get it all.

I don't see how they can name it after coining "cubwano." Maybe they could do an R2D2 and call it Cubywan.

__________________
I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet, so who am I to judge?

It's gotten to the point where careful investigation is needed just to tell parody from reality. I think that means reality is broken.- Noclevername.

Actually they googled for Brown's designation und hit the SMARTS pointing log. There is no evidence they even recognized them for what they were. Ortiz' says he didn't ("many numbers like coordinates of sorts" or something like that) and that's actually believable. Those were only pointing data of a remote controlled telescope, not necessarily very telling if you are not familiar with this instrument.
Well, at the first glance it looked like Ortiz and Santos-Sanz were standing there with their fingers deep in the cookies, but after looking at the whole picture I found Ortiz' version of events very plausible. Particularly his description of googling sounds very familiar to me. I would most probably have done exactly this: google, driven by curiosity - look at the hit - don't know what it is - not really important at the moment - ignore. I do this quite often. And then there is the testimony of Reiner Stoss who did the precovery/recovery computations for Ortiz. Not to analyze all the details here, but I tend to believe Ortiz.
They didn't. According to Ortiz, Santos-Sanz spotted the object just some days before the submission to MPC. Or the other way round, they submitted almost immediately.
For this they would actually need to bend the rules until they break. But since Brown had filed a formal complaint to the IAU in august 2005, they have to make a decision regarding Ortiz' (actually Santos-Sanz' ) claim of independent discovery. Unless there is new evidence I haven't seen yet, I would be really surprised (and disappointed) if they followed Brown's line of reasoning. His case is just far too weak.

Yes, and that is implausible because it is TOO coincidental. They just happened to discover the exact same KBO a few days before Brown submitted his abstract... Do you realize how incredibly improbable that is? Of course, Brown had been monitoring it for months and Ortiz's access of Brown's data before he announced was purely innocent -- according to Ortiz

Now, it could be that Ortiz's story is absolutely true, but it requires a reliance on coincidence and trust that makes it difficult to accept.

In addition to all of that, you then have to overlook Ortiz's questionable decision to rush his announcement to get credit for the discovery when he knew full well that Brown had already discovered 2003 EL61 six months earlier.

__________________
"Barbarism is the natural state of mankind. Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always ultimately triumph" -- Conan

It is very but not too coincidental, and it is not implausible. Astronomical (and other) discoveries happen when they do.
It is improbable but not incredible. Some years ago I found something (in quantum chemistry) and when we got a whole story together we wrote a paper. Somewhat later I found a paper I had missed before (as had my boss) where another research group had found and published part of this just before us. Fortunately our paper had already been submitted by the time theirs was published. It was a fundamental problem unsolved for a decade or two, and most people in the field had simply accepted that it was there and arranged to live with it. Then two groups not even knowing of each other started taking a closer look at it again and published the same finding around the same time. I had shown it on a conference poster before - coincidence? I think so.

In the light of Stoss' testimony I find such a coincidence much easier to believe than Ortiz setting up the precovery scenario. This would mean he had determined a quite reliable orbit from the pointing data of 2005, precovered the object in the images of 2003, given Stoss a wrong but plausible orbit (Stoss said he got a retrograde solution from Ortiz consistent with short arc orbit determination; Ortiz had said before, he had no experience with orbit determination and the retrograde solution was the reason to ask someone experienced) workable for successive precovery on older plates leading in turn to an orbit good enough for successful recovery coordinates. Now, that's much more a stretch than Santos-Sanz spotting the object just around the time Brown's abstract was published. And I don't see why Stoss should be lying.

Guilty unless proven innocent?
No, here you are jumping to conclusions neither much relevant nor necessarily true, casting doubt on Ortiz by suggestion of motive. What is this good for?

First, Ortiz didn't rush an announcement but submitted a set of astrometry soon after measurement. That's nothing suspicious or questionable but common practice and asked for by the MPC.

Second, we don't know what Ortiz knew about the identity. He most probably had an idea, but we don't know to what degree, and everything said about this from someone else than Ortiz, Santos-Sanz and maybe some other people at the IAA possibly having witnessed events there has to be mere speculation - be it from Brown, Marsden, Rabinowitz, Stoss, you, or me.

Third, it doesn't even matter. If Santos-Sanz had spotted the object and then they found evidence that Brown had already tracked it for a while, the latter wouldn't change anything about the submission. They still had to submit their data "as is" and it's up to the MPC (by its own rules) to link it with other observations if there are any.