Zdenek Sekanina

Zdeněk Sekanina (born 12 June 1936, Mladá Boleslav, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic)) is a Czech-American astronomer and scientist.

Zdeněk Sekanina in 1974

In 1959, Sekanina started to study astronomy at Charles University in Prague, where he was graduated in 1963.[1] After the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, he emigrated to the United States. Since 1980, he has been working at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

His main areas of professional study are meteors and interplanetary dust as well as the study of comets. In the course of his investigations, he dealt with Halley's comet,[2] the Tunguska event,[3] as well as the break-up and impact of Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 on Jupiter.[4]

He was involved in the data evaluation of the Giotto, Stardust, and Solar and Heliospheric Observatory missions.

The asteroid 1913 Sekanina was named after him.

References
  1. Zdenek Sekanina
  2. Dust jets in comet Halley observed by Giotto and from the ground
  3. INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP TUNGUSKA 96 July 14-17, 1996
  4. PERIODIC COMET SHOEMAKER-LEVY 9 (1993e)
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.