José Luis Ortiz Moreno

José Luis Ortiz Moreno is an astronomer, and former Vicedirector of Technology at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA), Spain. He leads a team working on minor Solar System objects at the Sierra Nevada Observatory in Granada, Spain.

On July 29, 2005, Ortiz announced the discovery of the dwarf planet Haumea, which went by the temporary designation 2003 EL₆₁.

Michael E. Brown and his team at Caltech had also been observing Haumea, and for a longer period of time than Ortiz, but had withheld publication pending securing its orbital parameters. Brown initially supported Ortiz and his team being given credit for the discovery. However, he withdrew that support when it turned out that Ortiz had accessed Brown's public observation logs and research just before announcing the discovery. Additional information was provided that showed that Ortiz and his team only started researching this object after looking at Brown's Caltech telescope files. After ignoring requests from Brown and only after a complaint was filed with the IAU, did Ortiz finally respond to the accusation. Ortiz maintained that he only did so to see if this was the same object that his team had been tracking. The IAU did not award credit to either party, but listed the Spanish observatory as the place of discovery, and accepted the Caltech suggested name of Haumea rather than Ortiz's Ataecina.

Ortiz is also mentioned in Mike Brown's memoir How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming.

External links and references

• Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía
• One Find, Two Astronomers: An Ethical Brawl, The New York Times, September 13, 2005
• Astronomer denies improper use of web data, NewScientist.com, September 21, 2005