Svetlana Gerasimenko
Soviet and Tajikistani astronomer (1945–2025)
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Through Soviet Union
Early life
Gerasimenko was born in the Ukrainian SSR in 1945. She was an ethnic Ukrainian; her father was Ukrainian and her mother Polish.
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Discovery of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko
On 11 September 1969 Gerasimenko, while working at the Alma-Ata Astrophysical Institute near Almaty, the then-capital city of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, Soviet Union photographed the comet 32P/Comas Solà using a 50-cm Maksutov telescope.
After she returned to her home institute, Klim 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. 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. By looking through all the material collected they found this new object on four more plates, dated 9 and 21 September.
Death
Gerasimenko died on 8 April 2025, at the age of 80.
Honors
Named after her
- Periodic comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko
- Minor planet 3945 Gerasimenko