Scott S. Sheppard

Scott Sander Sheppard is an American astronomer and a discoverer of numerous moons, comets and minor planets in the outer Solar System.
He is an astronomer in the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, DC. He attended Oberlin College as an undergraduate, and received his bachelor in physics with honors in 1998. Starting as a graduate student at the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, 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,, the first named leading Neptune trojan, 385571 Otrera, and the first high inclination Neptune trojan,. 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.

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Discoveries

Sheppard was the lead discoverer of the object with the most distant orbit known in the Solar System, . In 2014, the similarity of the orbit of to other extreme Kuiper belt object orbits led Sheppard and Trujillo to propose that an unknown Super-Earth mass planet in the outermost Solar System beyond 200 AU and up to 1500 AU is shepherding these smaller bodies into similar orbits. The extreme trans-Neptunian objects and, announced in 2016 and co-discovered by Sheppard, further show a likely unknown massive planet exists beyond a few hundred AU in the Solar System, with being the first known high semi-major axis and high perihelion object anti-aligned with the other known extreme objects. In 2018, the announcement of the high perihelion inner Oort cloud object 541132 Leleākūhonua by Sheppard et al., being only the third known after and Sedna, further demonstrated that a super-Earth planet in the distant Solar System likely exists as Leleākūhonua has many orbital similarities as the two other known inner Oort cloud objects.

Most notable discoveries

Sheppard has been involved in the discovery of many small Solar System bodies such as trans-Neptunian objects, centaurs, comets and near-Earth objects.

Three comets are named after him which are Sheppard-Trujillo, Sheppard-Tholen and comet Trujillo-Sheppard.
The possible dwarf planets discovered by Sheppard are 471143 Dziewanna,,, 532037 Chiminigagua, and.
In 2018, Sheppard was the lead discoverer of the most distant observed object in the Solar System and first object observed beyond 100 AU, dwarf planet, which is around 120 AU from the Sun.
He discovered a minor-planet moon around likely dwarf planet Chiminigagua.
He is also a co-discoverer of a minor-planet moon orbiting the binary trans-Neptunian object 341520 Mors–Somnus.
Among the numerous irregular moons of the major planets in whose discovery he has been involved are:

;Jupiter
Discovered moons of Jupiter :

;Saturn
Discovered moons of Saturn :

; Uranus
Discovered moons of Uranus :

Margaret
Ferdinand, first seen but lost in 2001 by Holman et al.
S/2023 U 1

; Neptune
Discovered moons of Neptune :

Psamathe
S/2002 N 5, first seen but lost in 2002 by Holman et al.
S/2021 N 1