Asteroid named after Dr. Stella Seitz

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The International Astronomical Union’s (IAU) Small Bodies Nomenclature Commission has honoured Dr. Stella Seitz (1968–2025) by naming an asteroid after her. Asteroid 10260 stellaseitz is a member of the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and was discovered on 4 October 1972 by Dr. Luboš Kohoutek in Hamburg-Bergedorf. Just over 6 kilometres in diameter, the asteroid orbits the Sun every 4.2 years at an average distance of approximately 400 million kilometres.

Stella Seitz joined LMU’s University Observatory in 1998 after completing her doctorate at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics and became a mainstay of the institute. As a scientist, she made fundamental contributions to gravitational lensing research and recognised early on the potential of large-scale sky surveys and modern AI methods in astrophysics. She initiated and drove the development of the observatory’s practical astrophysics courses and was a dedicated and successful mentor to numerous early-career researchers. Stella Seitz passed away in 2025.

In August 2026, her colleagues observed asteroid 10260 stellaseitz using the 43 cm telescope at Wendelstein Observatory. The short image sequence shows 10260 stellaseitz moving through the constellation Triangulum over a period of 104 minutes.