David Jewitt

David C. Jewitt (born 1958) is an English astronomer and professor of astronomy at UCLA's Earth, Planetary, and Space Science Department in California. He is best known for having discovered the first body in the Kuiper belt.

He was born in 1958 in England, and is a 1979 graduate of University College, London (UCL). Jewitt received an M.Sc. and a Ph.D. in astronomy at the California Institute of Technology in 1980 and 1983, respectively. His research interests cover all aspects of the solar system, including the trans-Neptunian Solar System, Solar System formation, ice in the asteroids and the physical properties of comets. Along with Jane Luu, he discovered the first Kuiper belt object (other than Pluto and its largest moon Charon) in 1992 and subsequently identified dozens of additional belt members in a series of pioneering wide field surveys. From these, he discovered that the belt is dynamically divided into regions – the classical Kuiper belt (circular, uninclined orbits, exemplified by 1992 QB1), the scattered disc (also called the "scattered Kuiper belt", which bodies have large elliptical orbits with perihelion near Neptune, discovered in 1997) and the Resonant Kuiper belt objects, whose periods are related simply to Neptune's. Those resonant objects in the 3:2 mean-motion resonance he called plutinos as a reminder that Pluto is one such object. These resonant objects can only be explained if Neptune migrated outwards, opening the door to new models of the Solar System in which unsuspected planet-disk and planet-planet interactions can be important.

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