is a Japanese

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 ...

who discovered a number of comets. As a young adult, Ikeya lived near

Lake Hamana is a brackish lagoon in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. Formerly a true lake, it is now connected to the Pacific Ocean by a channel. As an internal body of water, it is considered Japan's tenth-largest lake (by area). It spans the boundaries of th ...

and worked for a piano factory. During his employment there, he made his first discovery in 1963 with an optical telescope he built himself within his low budget. Two years later, he discovered the bright comet C/1965 S1 (Ikeya-Seki). Ikeya discovered the periodic comet 153P/Ikeya-Zhang on February 1, 2002, in

Mori, Hokkaidō is a List of towns in Japan, town located in Oshima Subprefecture, Hokkaido, Japan. The total area of the town is . As of September 2016, the town had a population of 16,299, and a population density of 44 persons per km2. Hokkaidō Koma-ga-tak ...

. The

asteroid An asteroid is a minor planet—an object larger than a meteoroid that is neither a planet nor an identified comet—that orbits within the Solar System#Inner Solar System, inner Solar System or is co-orbital with Jupiter (Trojan asteroids). As ...

4037 Ikeya is also named after Ikeya. On November 13, 2010, Ikeya and Shigeki Murakami co-discovered the comet P/2010 V1, now known as 332P/Ikeya-Murakami, using an optical telescope, rare in an era with access to digital imaging technology. Ikeya contributed his skill to the perfectly ground optics used in the construction of the

Pentax was a Japanese camera and optical equipment manufacturer. Currently, it exists as the Pentax Life Care Business Division of Hoya's medical endoscope business, as well as the digital camera brand of Ricoh Imaging, a subsidiary of Ricoh. Penta ...

40 cm

Cassegrain reflector The Cassegrain reflector is a combination of a primary concave mirror and a secondary convex mirror, often used in optical telescopes and Antenna (radio), radio antennas, the main characteristic being that the optical path folds back onto itself, ...

telescope installed at the Singapore Science Centre Observatory in March, 1989.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ikeya, Kaoru Discoverers of comets 20th-century Japanese astronomers Living people 1943 births 21st-century Japanese astronomers Scientists from Shizuoka Prefecture