Scott Sheppard

Scott Sander Sheppard (b. 1976) is an American astronomer and a discoverer of numerous moons, comets and minor planets in the outer Solar System.

Astronomer in the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, DC, he attended Oberlin College as an undergraduate. Starting as a graduate student at the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii, he was credited with the discovery of many small moons of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. He has also discovered the first known trailing Neptune trojan, 2008 LC18 and the second known leading Neptune trojan, 2004 UP10. These discoveries showed that the Neptune trojan objects are mostly on highly inclined orbits and thus likely captured small bodies from elsewhere in the solar system.

The main-belt asteroid 17898 Scottsheppard, discovered by LONEOS at Anderson Mesa Station in 1999, was named in his honor.

Sheppard was the lead discoverer of the object with the most distant orbit known in the solar system 2012 VP113 (nicknamed Biden). In 2014, the similarity of the orbit of 2012 VP113 to other extreme Kuiper belt object orbits led Sheppard and Trujillo to propose that an unknown Super-Earth mass planet (2-15 Earth masses) in the outer solar system beyond 200 AU and up to 1500 AU is shepherding these smaller bodies into similar orbits (see Planet X or Planet Nine). The extreme trans-Neptunian objects 2013 FT28 and 2014 SR349, announced in 2016 and co-discovered by Sheppard, further show a likely unknown massive planet exists beyond a few hundred AU in our Solar System.

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