Svetlana Gerasimenko

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Svetlana Gerasimenko
Светлана Герасименко
Світлана Герасименко
Born
Svetlana Ivanovna Gerasimenko

(1945-02-23) 23 February 1945 (age 79)
CitizenshipSoviet UnionTajikistan
Alma materTaras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv
Known forComet discovery
Scientific career
FieldsAstronomy

Svetlana Ivanovna Gerasimenko (Russian: Светлана Ивановна Герасименко; Ukrainian: Світлана Іванівна Герасименко; born 1945) is a Soviet and Tajikistani astronomer origin and discoverer of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.

Early life[edit]

Gerasimenko was born in the Ukrainian SSR in 1945. She is an ethnic Ukrainian; her father was Ukrainian and her mother Polish.[1]

Discovery of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko[edit]

On 11 September 1969 Gerasimenko while working at the Alma-Ata Astrophysical Institute, near Almaty, the then-capital city of Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, Soviet Union photographed the comet 32P/Comas Solà using a 50-cm Maksutov telescope.[2]

After she returned to her home institute, Klim Ivanovych Churyumov of the Kyiv National University's Astronomical Observatory examined this photograph and found a cometary object near the edge of the plate, but assumed that this was Comas Solà.[3][4] On 22 October, about a month after the photograph was taken, he discovered that the object could not be Comas Solà, because it was 2-3 degrees off the expected position. Further scrutiny produced a faint image of Comas Solà at its expected position on the plate, thus proving that the other object was a different comet.[3] By looking through all the material collected they found this new object on four more plates, dated 9 and 21 September.[4]

Honors[edit]

Named after her

See also[edit]

References and notes[edit]

  1. ^ "Герасименко: я открыла комету случайно". 17 November 2014. Retrieved 4 October 2016. Я украинка по отцу, полячка по маме, но осознаю себя украинкой.
  2. ^ "Klim Ivanovich Churyumov". International Astronomical Union. Retrieved 8 August 2014.
  3. ^ a b Kronk, Gary W.; et al. (2010). "67P/1969 R1 (Churyumov-Gerasimenko)". Cometography: A Catalog of Comets; Volume 5: 1960-1982. Cambridge University Press. pp. 241–245. ISBN 978-0521872263.
  4. ^ a b "Svetlana Gerasimenko - co-discoverer of comet 67P". European Space Agency.