David J. Tholen

David James Tholen (born July 31, 1955 ) is an American astronomer . He received his PhD from the University of Arizona in 1984 .

Overview

He works at the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy in the fields of planetology and astronomy of the solar system . Between 1981 and 2006 he identified or co-discovered a total of 37 asteroids .

In 1995 he took pictures of the newly discovered comet Hale-Bopp at a time when the comet was moving very slowly in relation to the stars in the background. The result of the partial images recorded with red, green and yellow filters and combined to form a color image was published on the website of the Institute for Astronomy. This image was digitally altered by UFO fanatics so that it showed an additional object near the comet, which was declared an alien spaceship. After Tholen and his colleague Olivier R. Hainaut demonstrated that it was just a manipulated version of one of their images, the image was withdrawn. However, this clarification of the matter was ignored by the Heaven's Gate sect . In March 1997, 39 members of the group suffered mass suicide .

Awards and discoveries

In 1984 Tholen created a classification scheme named after him with 14 classes for the classification of asteroids based on their spectral properties.
In 1987 the asteroid (3255) Tholen was named after him for his contributions to planetology.
In 1990 he received the Harold C. Urey Prize in Planetary Science from the American Astronomical Society .
2002, as one of five scientists to be awarded the "Gene Shoemaker Near Earth Object Grant".
Probably the most important discovery is the co-discovery of the asteroid (99942) Apophis (previously better known under its provisional name 2004 MN ₄ ) together with Roy Tucker and Fabrizio Bernardi from the University of Hawaii. The asteroid will come very close to Earth on April 13, 2029 .

Individual evidence

^ Minor Planet Discoverers
↑ Tholen responds to faked images ( Memento from September 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
↑ Tholen, DJ; Asteroid taxonomic classifications Asteroids II; Proceedings of the Conference pp. 1139-1150, University of Arizona Press, March 8-11, 1988, Tucson, AZ, bibcode : 1989aste.conf.1139T .
^ Harold C. Urey Prize in Planetary Science

Web links

Homepage

personal data
SURNAME	Tholen, David J.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Tholen, David James (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American astronomer
DATE OF BIRTH	July 31, 1955

[1] Minor Planet Discoverers

[2] Tholen responds to faked images ( Memento from September 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive )

[3] Tholen, DJ; Asteroid taxonomic classifications Asteroids II; Proceedings of the Conference pp. 1139-1150, University of Arizona Press, March 8-11, 1988, Tucson, AZ, bibcode : 1989aste.conf.1139T .

[4] Harold C. Urey Prize in Planetary Science