Stefano Sposetti (born 22 December 1958) is a Swiss

amateur astronomer Amateur astronomy is a hobby where participants enjoy observing or imaging celestial objects in the sky using the unaided eye, binoculars, or telescopes. Even though scientific research may not be their primary goal, some amateur astronomers m ...

and a prolific

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 ...

. He lives in

Gnosca Gnosca is a former municipality in the district of Bellinzona in the canton of Ticino in Switzerland. On 2 April 2017 the former municipalities of Camorino, Claro, Giubiasco, Gorduno, Gudo, Moleno, Monte Carasso, Pianezzo, Preonzo, Sant'Antonio ...

, in the Italian-speaking part of

Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

in the Ticino Alps, where the Gnosca Observatory is located. Sposetti took images of

2004 FH 2004 FH is a micro- asteroid and near-Earth object of the Aten group, approximately 30 meters in diameter, that passed just above the Earth's surface on 18 March 2004, at 22:08 UTC. It was the 11th closest approach to Earth recorded . The aste ...

, an

Aten asteroid The Aten asteroids are a dynamical group of asteroids whose orbits bring them into proximity with Earth. By definition, Atens are Earth-crossing asteroids . The group is named after 2062 Aten, the first of its kind, discovered on 7 Januar ...

that made a sub-lunar flyby of Earth. In addition, he detects the optical counterparts of

gamma-ray burst In gamma-ray astronomy, gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are immensely energetic explosions that have been observed in distant galaxies. They are the most energetic and luminous electromagnetic events since the Big Bang. Bursts can last from ten milli ...

s and conducts

transit photometry Any planet is an extremely faint light source compared to its parent star. For example, a star like the Sun is about a billion times as bright as the reflected light from any of the planets orbiting it. In addition to the intrinsic difficulty ...

on exoplanets at his observatory. As of 2019, Sposetti's discoveries include 164

minor planet According to the International Astronomical Union (IAU), a minor planet is an astronomical object in direct orbit around the Sun that is exclusively classified as neither a planet nor a comet. Before 2006, the IAU officially used the term ''minor ...

s (numbered only). The

Minor Planet Center The Minor Planet Center (MPC) is the official body for observing and reporting on minor planets under the auspices of the International Astronomical Union (IAU). Founded in 1947, it operates at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. Function ...

ranks him 70th in the list of all-time, worldwide discoverers. Asteroid 22354 Sposetti has been named after him.

List of discovered minor planets

References

External links

143–Gnosca – The astronomical observatory
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sposetti, Stefano 21st-century Swiss astronomers 1958 births Discoverers of asteroids * Living people 20th-century Swiss astronomers

List of discovered minor planets

See also

References

External links