Stephen C. Singer-Brewster (b. 1945) also known as Stephen C. Brewster is an American

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, moons, comets and galaxies – in either o ...

. He is a member of the

American Association of Variable Star Observers The American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) is an international nonprofit organization, founded in 1911, focused on coordinating, analyzing, publishing, and archiving variable star observations made largely by amateur astronomers ...

. He participated in the Palomar Planet Crossing Asteroid Survey (PCAS) as an observer and astrometrist under the direction of American astronomer

Eleanor Helin Eleanor Francis "Glo" Helin (née Francis, 19 November 1932 – 25 January 2009) was an American astronomer. She was principal investigator of the Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) program of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. (Some sources gi ...

(JPL/Caltech) from 1985 to 1988. During this period, Stephen Brewster was credited with the discovery of 105P/Singer Brewster, a

Jupiter-family comet A comet is an icy, small Solar System body that, when passing close to the Sun, warms and begins to release gases, a process that is called outgassing. This produces a visible atmosphere or coma, and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena are ...

. He also discovered six

asteroid An asteroid is a minor planet of the Solar System#Inner solar system, inner Solar System. Sizes and shapes of asteroids vary significantly, ranging from 1-meter rocks to a dwarf planet almost 1000 km in diameter; they are rocky, metallic o ...

s including the named

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 ...

asteroid 4555 Josefapérez and

5253 Fredclifford 5 (five) is a number, numeral and digit. It is the natural number, and cardinal number, following 4 and preceding 6, and is a prime number. It has attained significance throughout history in part because typical humans have five digits on e ...

, a

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

. Singer-Brewster has been an active member of Stony Ridge Observatory, Inc. since 1983 and has served on its board of directors. He formed the Faint Object Follow Up (FOFU) project at Stony Ridge in 2000 to encourage observations of faint asteroids and comets. Eleanor Helin honored him with the naming of the asteroid 10315 Brewster, to acknowledge his work for PCAS, Stony Ridge Observatory, and the

Jet Propulsion Laboratory The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a federally funded research and development center and NASA field center in the City of La Cañada Flintridge, California, United States. Founded in the 1930s by Caltech researchers, JPL is owned by NASA ...

(JPL). Singer-Brewster is currently a retired member of the staff at JPL. At JPL, he worked on a number of spacecraft missions such as the Pluto Fast Flyby, the Outer Planets/Solar Probe Mission and the

Europa Orbiter The Europa Orbiter was a planned NASA mission to Jupiter's Moon Europa, that was cancelled in 2002. Its main objectives included determining the presence or absence of a subsurface ocean and identifying candidate sites for future lander mi ...

mission. At the time of his retirement in 2003 he was working in the Mars Advanced Studies Program and the Europa Orbiter/X2000 avionics development project at JPL.

References

American astronomers 1945 births Discoverers of asteroids * Living people {{US-astronomer-stub