Fabrizio Bernardi
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Fabrizio Bernardi (born 1972) is an Italian astronomer and discoverer of minor planets and comets, best known for the co-discovery of the near-Earth and potentially hazardous asteroid 99942 Apophis.[2]
He is a member of the IAU,[3] and credited by the Minor Planet Center with the discovery of 7 numbered minor planets during 2002–2005,[1] including 280244 Ati, another near-Earth object a member of the Amor group of asteroids, and (413666) 2005 VJ119, a trans-Neptunian object.[4] In 2002, he discovered the outer main-belt asteroid 65001 Teodorescu at Campo Imperatore station, Gran Sasso, Italy, and named it after his former wife, the Romanian astronomer Ana Teodorescu.[5] To his present fiancée, Irene Magni, he named the asteroid 114735 Irenemagni.[6].
He was involved together with colleagues Marco Micheli and David Tholen, with observations of the Mars-crosser asteroid 2007 WD5 during his stay at the University of Hawaii observatory.[7] While at the Mauna Kea Observatories in Hawaii, he discovered 268P/Bernardi, a Jupiter family comet.[8][9]
The main-belt asteroid 27983 Bernardi, discovered by astronomers Andrea Boattini and Maura Tombelli at Cima Ekar, was named in his honor on 9 November 2003 (M.P.C. 50252).[2][10]