Lenka Kotková (''

née A birth name is the name of a person given upon birth. The term may be applied to the surname, the given name, or the entire name. Where births are required to be officially registered, the entire name entered onto a birth certificate or birth re ...

'' Šarounová; born 26 July 1973) is a

Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus' Places *Czech, ...

astronomer An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses their studies on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. They observe astronomical objects such as stars, planets, natural satellite, moons, comets and galaxy, g ...

and a

discoverer of minor planets This is a list of minor-planet discoverers credited by the Minor Planet Center with the discovery of one or several minor planets (such as near-Earth and main-belt asteroids, Jupiter trojans and distant objects). , the discovery of 612,011 numb ...

. She works at Observatoř Ondřejov (Ondřejov Observatory), located near

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...

. Besides numerous

main-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, called ...

asteroids she also discovered

Mars-crosser asteroid A Mars-crossing asteroid (MCA, also Mars-crosser, MC) is an asteroid whose orbit crosses that of Mars. Some Mars-crossers Minor planet designation, numbered below 100000 are listed here. They include the two numbered Mars trojans 5261 Eureka and ...

9671 Hemera and

Hilda family The Hilda asteroids (adj. ''Hildian'') are a dynamical group of more than 5,000 asteroids located beyond the asteroid belt but within Jupiter's orbit, in a 3:2 orbital resonance with Jupiter. The namesake is the asteroid 153 Hilda. Hildas move i ...

asteroid 21804 Václavneumann. Lenka Kotková studied meteorology at the faculty of Mathematics and Physics of the

Charles University in Prague Charles University ( cs, Univerzita Karlova, UK; la, Universitas Carolina; german: Karls-Universität), also known as Charles University in Prague or historically as the University of Prague ( la, Universitas Pragensis, links=no), is the oldest an ...

. Her tasks at the Astronomical institute AV ČR in Ondřejov are primarily the development of databases, spectroscopical and photometric observation, and data processing. During her work at the department of inter planetary matter her main role was the observation of near-earth asteroids, along with

Petr Pravec Petr Pravec (born September 17, 1967) is a Czech astronomer and a discoverer of minor planets, born in Třinec, Czech Republic. Pravec is a prolific discoverer of binary asteroids, expert in photometric observations and rotational lightcurves a ...

and

Peter Kušnirák Peter Kušnirák (born 1974) is a Slovakia, Slovak astronomer, discoverer of minor planets, and a prolific Photometry (astronomy), photometrist of light-curves at Ondřejov Observatory in the Czech Republic. He was married to Slovak astronomer Ulr ...

she identified a large proportion of known binary asteroids. In the same time period she discovered or co-discovered over one hundred asteroids. At the present time Lenka Kotková works in the stellar department as an observant with a two-metre Ondřejov telescope. In the year 2000 she received the ''Zdeněk Kvíz Award'' of the ''Czech Astronomical Society'' for significant work in the research of

variable star A variable star is a star whose brightness as seen from Earth (its apparent magnitude) changes with time. This variation may be caused by a change in emitted light or by something partly blocking the light, so variable stars are classified as ...

s. The asteroid

10390 Lenka 1 (one, unit, unity) is a number representing a single or the only entity. 1 is also a numerical digit and represents a single unit of counting or measurement. For example, a line segment of ''unit length'' is a line segment of length 1 ...

, discovered by her colleagues Petr Pravec and

Marek Wolf Marek Wolf (born 30 June 1957) is a Czech Republic, Czech astronomer, former head the Astronomický ústav, Univerzita Karlova v Praze (Astronomical Institute, Charles University of Prague). He is a discoverer of several asteroids between 1995 an ...

in 1997, is named after her. The asteroid

60001 Adélka 6 (six) is the natural number following 5 and preceding 7. It is a composite number and the smallest perfect number. In mathematics Six is the smallest positive integer which is neither a square number nor a prime number; it is the second smalles ...

, discovered by her in 1999, is named after her daughter, while 7897 Bohuška, discovered by her in 1995, is named after her mother.

List of discovered minor planets

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kotkova, Lenka 1973 births Czech astronomers Discoverers of asteroids * Living people Women astronomers People from Prague-West District Charles University alumni