Stefano Sposetti (born 22 December 1958) is a Swiss amateur astronomer and a prolific discoverer of minor planets. He lives in

Gnosca Gnosca is a former Municipalities of Switzerland, municipality in the district of Bellinzona (district), Bellinzona in the Cantons of Switzerland, canton of Ticino in Switzerland. On 2 April 2017 the former municipalities of Camorino, Claro, Swit ...

, in the Italian-speaking part of

Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...

in the Ticino Alps, where the Gnosca Observatory is located. Sposetti took images of

2004 FH 2004 FH is a micro-asteroid and near-Earth object of the Aten group, approximately 30 meters in diameter, that passed just above the Earth's surface on 18 March 2004, at 22:08 UTC. It was the 11th closest approach to Earth recorded . The aste ...

, an Aten asteroid that made a sub-lunar flyby of Earth. In addition, he detects the optical counterparts of

gamma-ray burst In gamma-ray astronomy, gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are extremely energetic events occurring in distant Galaxy, galaxies which represent the brightest and most powerful class of explosion in the universe. These extreme Electromagnetic radiation, ele ...

s and conducts

transit photometry Methods of detecting exoplanets usually rely on indirect strategies – that is, they do not directly image the planet but deduce its existence from another signal. Any planet is an extremely faint light source compared to its parent star. For e ...

on exoplanets at his observatory. As of 2019, Sposetti's discoveries include 164

minor planet 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 ''minor ...

s (numbered only). The

Minor Planet Center The Minor Planet Center (MPC) is the official body for observing and reporting on minor planets under the auspices of the International Astronomical Union (IAU). Founded in 1947, it operates at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. Funct ...

ranks him 70th in the list of all-time, worldwide discoverers. Asteroid 22354 Sposetti has been named after him.

List of discovered minor planets

References

External links

143–Gnosca – The astronomical observatory
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sposetti, Stefano 21st-century Swiss astronomers 1958 births Discoverers of asteroids * Living people 20th-century Swiss astronomers

List of discovered minor planets

See also

References

External links