Zdenek Sekanina (born as Zdeněk Sekanina; 12 June 1936, Mladá Boleslav, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic)) is a Czech-born American astronomer.

In 1959, he started to study astronomy at the Charles University in Prague, where he graduated in 1963.^[1] Since 1980, he has been working at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

His main study area is the study of meteors and interplanetary matter as well as the study of comets since the completion of his university career. In the course of his investigations he dealt with Halley's comet,^[2] the Tunguska event,^[3] as well as the breaking and impact of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 on Jupiter.^[4]

He was involved in the data evaluation of the Giotto, Stardust and SOHO missions.

The asteroid (1913) Sekanina was named after him.

References