Arto Oksanen

Who is Arto Oksanen?

Arto Oksanen is a Finnish amateur astronomer. He has been actively working in the fields of variable stars, asteroid search programs, gamma ray bursts, CCD photometry and building state-of-the-art amateur observatories in Finland. He has been mostly working in the Nyrölä Observatory that is located about 20 kilometers from the city of Jyväskylä in Finland.

His latest observatory projects include the construction of a new robotic telescope center that will use an RC-Optical Systems Ritchey-Chrétien telescope, research grade SBIG CCD camera and Paramount ME robotic mount. The system should be fully operational in the last quarter of 2005.

In 2004 Oksanen received the AAVSO Directors Award for his work in variable star research and observing.

In October 2007 Oksanen was the first to find optical afterglow of GRB 071010B which had been detected by Swift satellite only 17 minutes before.