| see § List of discovered minor planets |
Francesco Manca (born November 1966, in Milan, Italy) is an Italian amateur astronomer and discoverer of minor planets at the Sormano Astronomical Observatory in northern Italy.[2]
Manca also performs follow-up astrometry of near-Earth objects (NEOs). He acquired research and observational experience on the NEOs at professional observatories in Arizona, United States at Catalina Sky Survey (IAU Obs code 703 and G96) Non-observational work focuses on computations of orbit and close approaches of asteroids with the Earth (linked at Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) - Jet Propulsion Laboratory) and computation of orbit identifications of asteroids (Near Earth Asteroids, Mars-crossing asteroids , Hungaria group, Trans-Neptunian object) and comets.
He wrote many articles on specialistic magazines. Member of SIMCA (Italian: Società Italiana Meccanica Celeste e Astrodinamica), associated (INAF) National Institute for Astrophysics and International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN). His professional activity concerns the application of measuring systems as encoders for Right Ascension and Declination (azimuth and elevation), installed on telescopes and Radio telescopes such as the VLT, LBT, ELT (Extremely Large Telescope), ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter Array), DAG (Turkish for Eastern Anatolia Observatory), ASTRI (Astrophysics with mirrors at Italian Replicant Technology) and NEOSTEL (FlyEye telescope) for ESA or on space instruments as Solar Monitoring Observatory.
The Koronian asteroid 15460 Manca, discovered by Andrea Boattini and Luciano Tesi at San Marcello Pistoiese Observatory in 1998, is named in his honour.[2]