Name Valentin Ivanov Role Astronomer | Education University of Arizona | |
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Russia 2018 magazine valentin ivanov remembers 2003
Valentin D. Ivanov (Bulgarian: Валентин Д. Иванов) is a Bulgarian astronomer working in the European Southern Observatory, mainly at the Paranal site. Among his primary research areas are the dynamics of star clusters, formation of stars, brown dwarfs, and exoplanets around such objects.
Contents
Valentin Ivanov and Ray Jayawardhana are two of the pioneers of the investigation of the planemos, a special cast of exoplanets. They discovered the first double planemo Oph 162225-240515. This discovery, came just before the debate about the 2006 planet definition, and posed the problem about the distinction between planets and low-mass stars (brown dwarfs)
Background
Valentin D. Ivanov was born in the town of Bourgas, Bulgaria in 1967. He obtained his master's degree in physics and astronomy at the University of Sofia in 1992. He earned a PhD degree at the University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, U.S. in 2001. He became a fellow at the European Southern Observatory, on La Silla and Cerro Paranal. In 2003-2014 he was a staff astronomer at the European Southern Observatory, Paranal where he was an instrument scientist for a number of near-infrared instruments, including SofI and the NTT, ISAAC and the VLT, and the wide-field camera VIRCAM mounted at the VISTA (telescope). He moved to the ESO headquarters in 2015 where he works in the data products group.
Science fiction is Valentin's hobby. He has published about thirty stories in Bulgaria and a few in various English language venues. In 2006, together with Kiril Dobrev, he has published a science fiction story collection in Bulgarian.