Petr Pravec (born September 17, 1967) is a 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, moons, comets and galaxies – in either ...

and a discoverer of minor planets, born in Třinec,

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. The ...

. Pravec is a prolific discoverer of

binary asteroid A binary asteroid is a system of two asteroids orbiting their common barycenter. The binary nature of 243 Ida was discovered when the Galileo spacecraft flew by the asteroid in 1993. Since then numerous binary asteroids and several triple a ...

s, expert in photometric observations and rotational

lightcurve In astronomy, a light curve is a graph of light intensity of a celestial object or region as a function of time, typically with the magnitude of light received on the y axis and with time on the x axis. The light is usually in a particular freq ...

s at Ondřejov Observatory. He is credited by the Minor Planet Center with the discovery and co-discovery of 350 numbered

minor planets 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 ''mino ...

, and is leading the effort of a large consortium of stations called "BinAst" to look for multiplicity in the

near-Earth object A near-Earth object (NEO) is any small Solar System body whose orbit brings it into proximity with Earth. By convention, a Solar System body is a NEO if its closest approach to the Sun (perihelion) is less than 1.3 astronomical units (AU). ...

s and inner

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 ...

populations. He is a member of the ''

Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic The Czech Academy of Sciences (abbr. CAS, cs, Akademie věd České republiky, abbr. AV ČR) was established in 1992 by the Czech National Council as the Czech successor of the former Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences and its tradition goes back ...

''. The main-belt asteroid 4790 Petrpravec, discovered by Eleanor Helin in 1988, is named after him. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 20 June 1997 ().

List of discovered minor planets

References

External links

Ondrejov Asteroid Photometry Project
Pravec, P.; Wolf, M.; Sarounova, L. {{DEFAULTSORT:Pravec, Petr 1967 births Czech astronomers Discoverers of asteroids * Living people People from Třinec 20th-century astronomers 21st-century astronomers