Charles Thomas Kowal

Charles Thomas Kowal (born November 8, 1940 in Buffalo , † November 28, 2011 in Cinebar , Washington ) was an American astronomer who discovered numerous moons , asteroids and comets .

life and career

Kowal discovered the Jupiter moons Leda and Themisto in 1974/1975 , whereby Themisto was initially lost and was only found again in 2000. In 1977 he discovered the unusual asteroid (2060) Chiron , which developed a coma discovered in 1991 during its last passage through the perihelion and was therefore given an additional designation as a short-period comet. Likewise the Aten asteroid (2340) Hathor , the Apollo asteroids (1981) Midas , (2063) Bacchus , (2102) Tantalus and (5660) 1974 MA , the Cupid asteroids (4596) 1981 QB and (4688) 1980 WF and the Trojans (2241) Alcathous and (2594) Acamas .

Kowal was also the sole or co-discoverer of various comets, u. a. 99P / Kowal , 104P / Kowal , 134P / Kowal-Vavrova , 143P / Kowal-Mrkos and 158P / Kowal-LINEAR (the Chiron object also has the name 95P / Chiron ). His accomplishments also included the discovery of numerous extragalactic supernovae .

Obituary in the Buffalo News ( Memento from January 17, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
CT Kowal: Galileo's Observations of Neptune . DIO Vol. 15, pp. 3–6 (December 2008) ( PDF , 80 kB)
Publications by CT Kowal in the Astrophysics Data System