Schelte J. Bus facts for kids

Schelte John "Bobby" Bus (born 1956) is an American astronomer. He is known for finding many minor planets, which are small space rocks like asteroids. He works at the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaiʻi and also helps lead NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) in Hawaii, USA.

About Schelte Bus

Schelte Bus finished his first degree in 1979 at the California Institute of Technology. Later, in 1999, he earned his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

While at MIT, he worked with Richard Binzel on a big project called SMASSII. This project studied main-belt asteroids using special light measurements called spectroscopic surveys. They collected data using visible light (colors we can see) from 1993 to 1999. During his studies, he was guided by a famous scientist named Eugene Shoemaker. As of 2025, Bus continues to be an astronomer at the University of Hawaii and a leader at NASA's IRTF.

Awards and Honors

A special honor was given to Schelte Bus when an asteroid was named after him. This asteroid, called 3254 Bus, was found in 1982 by another astronomer, Edward Bowell.

Discoveries

Schelte Bus has made many exciting discoveries in space! In 1981, he found a comet that regularly orbits the Sun, which is now known as 87P/Bus.

Since 1975, he has also discovered or helped discover over a thousand asteroids. These include different types of asteroids:

• An Apollo asteroid called 2135 Aristaeus. This asteroid will pass quite close to Earth in the future, about 13 times the distance to the Moon, on March 30, 2147.
• An Amor asteroid.
• More than 40 Jupiter trojans, which are asteroids that share Jupiter's orbit. The first one he found was 3240 Laocoon, which he discovered with Eleanor F. Helin.

Bus also discovered asteroids named after famous science fiction writers: 5020 Asimov and 4923 Clarke.

See also

In Spanish: Schelte John Bus para niños

• List of minor planet discoverers § S. J. Bus
• Francesca E. DeMeo