9936 Al-Biruni, provisional designation , is a carbonaceous asteroid from the outer region of the
asteroid belt
The asteroid belt is a torus-shaped region in the Solar System, located roughly between the orbits of the planets Jupiter and Mars. It contains a great many solid, irregularly shaped bodies, of many sizes, but much smaller than planets, c ...
, approximately 24 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered on 8 August 1986, by Belgian and Bulgarian astronomers
Eric Elst
Eric Walter Elst (30 November 1936 – 2 January 2022) was a Belgian astronomer at the Royal Observatory of Belgium in Uccle and a prolific discoverer of asteroids. The Minor Planet Center ranks him among the top 10 discoverers of minor planets ...
and
Violeta Ivanova
Violeta Ivanova (Виолета Иванова) is a Bulgarian astronomer.
She is credited by the Minor Planet Center with the discovery of 14 asteroids between 1984 and 1988. She works at the Institute of Astronomy, Bulgarian Academy of Science ...
at the Rozhen Observatory, located in Bulgaria's Smolyan province near the border to Greece. It was named for Persian medieval scholar
Al-Biruni
Abu Rayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni (973 – after 1050) commonly known as al-Biruni, was a Khwarazmian Iranian in scholar and polymath during the Islamic Golden Age. He has been called variously the "founder of Indology", "Father of Co ...