Peter Jenniskens

Peter Jenniskens

Petrus Matheus Marie (Peter) Jenniskens (born 2 August 1962, in Horst) is a Dutch and American astronomer and a senior research scientist at the Carl Sagan Center of the SETI Institute and at NASA Ames Research Center. He is an expert on meteor showers. Jenniskens is the author of the 790 page book "Meteor Showers and their Parent Comets" published by Cambridge University Press in 2006. Jenniskens is president of Commission 22 of the International Astronomical Union (2012-2015) and was chair of the Working Group on Meteor Shower Nomenclature (2006–2012) after it was first established. Discovered at Ond?ejov Observatory by Petr Pravec, asteroid "42981 Jenniskens" is named in his honor. In 2008, Jenniskens together with Muawia Shaddad, led a team from the University of Khartoum in Sudan that recovered fragments of asteroid 2008 TC3 in the Nubian Desert, marking the first time meteorite fragments had been found from an object that was previously tracked in outer space before hitting Earth.

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