Erwin Schwab

Erwin Schwab is a German amateur astronomer and discoverer of minor planets, who works at the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research, near Darmstadt, Germany. He has discovered and co-discovered more than 80 asteroids from the Starkenburg, Tzec Maun and Taunus observatories. As volunteer scientist for the European Space Agency (ESA) he recovered near-Earth objects and comets. From 2014 to 2021 he recovered 30 lost comets, which equates to about 25% of the worldwide proportion in that timespan. Using the Schmidt telescope at Calar Alto Observatory to search for a lost comet he discovered in 2019 a unique variable star – the first known eclipsing stream-fed intermediate polar, cataloged as J1832.4-1627