Named in honor of Antonio Vagnozzi (1950– ), who in 1993 became the first amateur astronomer in Italy to discover a minor planet with a CCD camera and, after Spacewatch {see planet  (4255)}, the first person to have a CCD discovery numbered. In addition to his work on minor planets, he has more recently been engaged in a systematic search for supernovae and was a codiscoverer of SN 1996ae. (M 31611) _ _.