The first asteroid discovered from Ireland for 160 years was confirmed in the early hours yesterday after first being spotted on Tuesday by an enthusiastic stargazer from his back garden.

"I've been doing asteroid work for a good few years but I can't think of anything better than discovering one, particularly as an amateur," said a delighted Dave McDonald yesterday.

"I was stunned but that's probably the key thing -- an amateur discovery -- as the professionals do this regularly in the US in government-funded observatories.

"I discovered it first on Tuesday night, but you have to observe it over two nights and see it move and I got help on it from colleagues. We also still had to check if it was a satellite, or a piece of space junk or a defect in the camera but it was none of those, thankfully."

But while we may now know what it isn't, there is still plenty of research to be done on what it is.

"Asteroids are the remnants of the very early solar system, a relic of a time when the Earth and all the other planets were formed," David Moore of Astronomy Ireland explained.

Initial research indicates that this particular asteroid, the 2008 TM9, is part of an asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and is located "to the south" as you look at the sky, and is twice the distance from Earth as the Earth is from the sun, give or take a few miles.

It is thought to be "tens of kilometres" in size and, rest assured, poses no immediate threat to those of us on Earth.

Apart from that, all we know is that it may soon be called Fiona O Maille.

"It's a fairly convoluted process but, as far as I know, I do get to name it," Mr McDonald (44), a health and safety consultant who lives in Co Kildare, said.

"They are quite particular -- you can't name it after your dog or cat, for example.

"I was thinking maybe an Irish goddess but there are rules about that as well, as they usually only like larger objects to be called after gods and goddesses. But if they let me and after all the stuff she's put up with, I would probably go for my wife's name, Fiona."

The last asteroid discovered from Ireland was named Metis and was spotted from an observatory in Sligo in 1848.

At that time the largest telescope in the world was located in Birr, Co Offaly, and Irish astronomy was among the world's best.

Mr McDonald's own telescope in his backyard in Celbridge is now as powerful as the Birr telescope was.

"What is interesting about this discovery is how this particular type of backyard astronomy has become so accessible," Leo Enright of the Discover Science programme said.

While Metis was the ninth asteroid ever discovered, it is thought that more than one million "minor planets" will have been catalogued by the end of the decade.