Photo:valya.info
Translation:Karmen Horvat
Author:A.Š.
Illustrative photo
Published: April 14, 2009 11:24h
Young astronomers Aleksandar and Stefan Cikota, twins who are Physics students at the Zurich University, discovered an asteroid in March last year and named it (187700) Zagreb, the Jutarnji list writes.
According to the rules of the International Astronomy Union, whoever discovers an asteroid and precisely determines its orbit has the right to name it. The (187700) Zagreb asteroid moves at 18.2 km per second between Mars and Jupiter, while it takes 4.4 years for the asteroid to circle the Sun. The Cikota brothers have discovered over 2,300 new asteroids together with colleagues of the La Sagra Observatory.
Aleksandar and Stefan were born in Osijek, Croatia, but moved to Switzerland at the age of 2. Their family moved to Zagreb when they were 9. The Cikotas started studying astronomy at the age of 12 and took part in the Visnjan School of astronomy.
This is where they met Reiner M. Stross, an astronomy amateur from Germany. In the meantime, Aleksandar Cikota presented a poster on the supernova research in January this year at a conference of the American Astronomy Society. The young astronomer collaborated with 15 more students at the NASA Space Telescope Science Institute.
http://www.javno.com/en-croatia/asteroi ... reb_250877
http://www.magicus.info/hr/magicus/tekst.php?id=20308
