Kotkova, Lenka

Lenka Kotkova ( Czech. Lenka Kotková , nee Sharounova , July 26, 1973 ) is a Czech astronomer and discoverer of asteroids who works at the Ondřev Observatory . In the period from 1994 to 2003, she discovered a total of 248 asteroids , 37 of which she discovered together with other Czech astronomers ^[1] . Among them, in addition to the asteroids of the Main Belt , there is also the asteroid (9671) Hemera , which intersects the orbit of Mars , and the asteroid (21804) Wenceslasman , which is part of the Hilda family .

Lenka Kotkova
Lenka Kotková
Lenka Kotkova on the background of the Ondrejev Observatory
Birth name
Date of Birth	July 26, 1973 ( 1973-07-26 ) (aged 46)
Place of Birth	Dobřichovice
A country	Czech
Scientific field	Astronomy
Place of work	Ondrzheev Observatory
Alma mater	Charles University

Lenka Kotkova studied meteorology at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics at Charles University in Prague . Even during her studies, she began working at the Astronomical Institute and Observatory of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Ondrzheev , where she was engaged in creating databases and processing the results of spectroscopic and photometric (English) observations of asteroids. Later, she took an active part in the search and observation of near-Earth asteroids , and, along with such astronomers as Peter Pravets and Peter Kushnirak , studied most of the known double asteroids . In the same period of time, she discovered about half of all the asteroids discovered by her at the moment.

Currently, she works in the department of stellar observational astronomy with a two-meter mirror telescope and is engaged in the study of variable stars, for which she had already won the Cenu Zdeňka Kvíze award in 2000 for her achievement in the study of variable stars .

In recognition of her merits, one of the asteroids was given her name (10390) Lenka ^[2] , and another asteroid (60001) Adelka bears the name of her daughter.