Souten is asteroid #8200 and also known as 1994 AY1. Souten was discovered by the Japanese astronomers Hirasawa Masanori (平沢 正規) and Suzuki Shōhei (鈴木 正平) at Mount Nyukasa Station. Souten’s orbit is characterized by a semi-major axis of 2.62 Astronomical Units, an eccentricity of 0.13, a period of revolution of 1 553 days, and an inclination of 1.6 degrees.

The discoverers of the asteroid studied at the Waseda University, which is one of the most renowned and most famous universities in Japan, comparable with Harvard or Yale in the USA. Waseda University is Waseda-daigaku (早稲田大学) in Japanese and uses to be abbreviated as Sōdai (早大). This simply is a case of kanji, which have several different pronunciations. Astronomy is tenmongaku (天文学) in Japanese. Putting the first kanji of both words together produces Sōten (早天), which exactly is the name of the asteroid. Spelling the long o as ou is done in Japanese too when spelling with hiragana, so this is a correct transcription. Souten shall be the nickname of a Waseda University Astronomy Association. It could be an association similar to the Znokai, but would also be a correct abbreviation for the Waseda University Astronomy Department. At least searching for Sōten (早天) brings absolutely no results, not even a hint to Waseda University. Hints can only be found to dictionaries because sōten (早天) is a Japanese word too and means daybreak. So if the asteroid Souten would bear an English name, then this name would be Daybreak.

The Japanese language knows some other words for daybreak too. Sōten (早天) literally means “early sky”, so this is something, which you know if you look up to the sky like astronomers do. So sōten (早天) marks for astronomers the moment when the observation period for most objects ends and the observation period for astronomy of the Sun begins. Sōten (早天) furthermore is a name based on a mere observation and has nothing to do with mythology, which would also know a Japanese goddess of dawn. I introduced Ame-no-Uzume-no-Mikoto (天宇受売命) on this blog as the goddess of dancing. But because she made the Sun goddess Amaterasu-ōmikami (天照大御神) come out of her cave, so Ame-no-Uzume-no-Mikoto (天宇受売命) also is the goddess of daybreak.

Souten is a concept similar to Aletheia, but reverse. Both show that something isn’t hidden. But Souten indicates that something gets hidden by too much light, while its own light was revealed by the darkness of the surrounding. Souten nevertheless belongs to the asteroids with the light theme, like for example Lumen too.