David J. Tholen

+ Minor planets discovered: 66 ). He won the H. C. Urey Prize in 1990.

He co-discovered the asteroid 99942 Apophis (previously known as ). This asteroid will closely approach Earth on April 13, 2029 and very briefly appear as bright as a third magnitude star.

In 1995, Tholen obtained images of the then newly discovered comet Hale-Bopp at a time when the comet was moving very slowly with respect to the background stars, thus permitting the red- green- and blue-filtered images to be combined into a color composite without the background stars appearing as separately colored dots. This color composite image was made publicly accessible via the Institute of Astronomy's web site.

Later, then postdoc at University of Hawaiʻi, Olivier R. Hainaut discovered that a nearly identical image was being discussed by late-night radio host Art Bell and one of his guests, Courtney Brown, who claimed that it proved the existence of an unnatural object following the comet, something supposedly seen by those who had learned how to engage in the technique of "remote viewing". The image provided to Bell by Brown, and eventually made public on Bell's web site, did indeed show an object next to the comet that did not appear in archival images of the sky. In reality, that image had been digitally altered from the original image posted by Tholen, presumably by taking the image of a star near the edge of the frame, adding it next to the comet, and then trimming away the outer edges of the frame.

Tholen and Hainaut exposed the fraud by producing the original image, which showed no such additional object. Nevertheless, some conspiracy theorists maintained that Brown's version was actually the original image and that Tholen had removed the additional object from the one on the Institute's web site. The Heaven's Gate cult was so convinced that the additional object was a spaceship coming to take them away from Earth that they committed mass suicide.

The Mars-crosser asteroid 3255 Tholen, discovered by Edward Bowell in 1980, is named after David Tholen.

Tholen is a fan of the University of Kansas Jayhawks college basketball team and the Kansas City Royals Major League Baseball team.

He also plays clarinet and bass clarinet for the Honolulu Community Concert Band and the Oahu Community Orchestra.

He is also a user of the OS/2, Linux, Windows, Solaris, and Mac OS operating systems.

Tholen frequently posts to various Usenet groups using the alias [email protected].

List of discovered minor planets

3124 Kansas 3 November 1981 11606 Almary 19 October 1995 17045 Markert 22 March 1999 28 April 1998 23 February 1998 49036 Pelion 21 August 1998 18 July 2001 18 July 1999 2 April 2000 99942 Apophis 19 June 2004 14 May 1999 8 January 2000 18 July 2001 8 January 2000 19 July 2001 8 March 2002 19 January 2001 13 December 2004 24 October 2005 24 October 2005 7 January 2000 29 September 2000 2 January 2006 24 October 2005 31 October 2005 24 October 2005 24 October 2005 9 December 2001 24 October 2005 5 October 2005 24 October 2005 24 October 2005 24 October 2005 24 October 2005 24 October 2005 24 October 2005 4 September 2005 24 October 2005 24 October 2005 15 September 2004 24 October 2005 16 June 2004 8 June 2005 21 July 2006 24 October 2005 24 October 2005 24 October 2005 20 July 2001 7 April 2007 30 September 2000 24 October 2005 9 December 2001 3 April 2000 1 August 2005 7 November 2005 17 August 2004 29 December 2005 9 December 2001 23 December 2005 24 October 2005 29 September 2000 24 November 2000 13 December 2004 28 April 1998 541132 Leleākūhonua 13 October 2015 24 April 2005 Co-discovery made with: J. X. Luu C. Trujillo D. C. Jewitt R. J. Whiteley R. A. Tucker F. Bernardi S. S. Sheppard