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Schelte J. Bus
Schelte John "Bobby" Bus
is an American
astronomer
and
discoverer of minor planets
at the
Institute for Astronomy
of the
University of Hawaii
and
Deputy Director
of NASA's
Infrared Telescope Facility
at the
Mauna Kea Observatory
in
Hawaii, United States
.
Biography
Bus graduated in
1979
from
Caltech
with a BS.
In 1999
, he received his Ph.D from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
.With MIT's
Richard Binzel
, Bus further added to the knowledge about
main-belt asteroids
in a spectroscopic survey published in 2002. This project was known as
Small Main-Belt Asteroid Spectroscopic Survey
,
Phase II
or SMASSII, which built on a previous survey of the main-belt asteroids. The visible-wavelength spectra data was gathered between
August 1993
and
March 1999
. During his studies, he worked under the
supervision
of
Eugene Shoemaker
. As of 2017, Bus is an Astronomer at the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy and Deputy Director of NASA's
Infrared Telescope
Facility IRTF.
Awards and honors
Asteroid
3254 Bus
, which was discovered in 1982 by
Edward Bowell
, was named in his honor.
Discoveries
In 1981, Bus discovered
periodic comet
87P/Bus
. Since 1975, he has also discovered or co-discovered over a
thousand
asteroids, including: an
Apollo asteroid
,
2135 Aristaeus
, which will come within 13
lunar distances
of
the Earth
on
30 March
2147; an
Amor asteroid
; and more than 40
Jupiter trojans
. The first of these was
3240 Laocoon
, which he co-discovered with Eleanor F. Helin. Bus was also the
discoverer of asteroids
5020 Asimov
and
4923 Clarke
, named after two
Science Fiction writers
.
List of minor planets
discovered by Schelte Bus
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