Named in honor of Marco Scardia (1948– ), astrometrist at the Merate branch of the Brera Astronomical Observatory. His principal fields of interest are visual double stars and minor solar-system bodies. As a specialist on visual binaries, in the past fifteen years he has carried out more than four thousand measurements and calculated approximately 80 orbits of binary stars. He is also active in the astrometric observation of minor planets and comets and in the calculation of their orbits. (M 23138) _ _.