1909 Alekhin is an asteroid

Asteroid

Asteroids are a class of small Solar System bodies in orbit around the Sun. They have also been called planetoids, especially the larger ones...

 discovered on September 4, 1972 by Lyudmila Zhuravlyova

Lyudmila Zhuravlyova

Lyudmila Vasilyevna Zhuravleva is a Soviet, Russian and Ukrainian astronomer.She works at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory.She also serves as president...

. The asteroid was named in honor of Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Alekhin

Alexander Alekhine

Alexander Alexandrovich Alekhine was the fourth World Chess Champion. He is often considered one of the greatest chess players ever.By the age of twenty-two, he was already among the strongest chess players in the world. During the 1920s, he won most of the tournaments in which he played...

, a Russian-French chess

Chess

Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...

 champion. It is a main belt

Asteroid belt

The asteroid belt is the region of the Solar System located roughly between the orbits of the planets Mars and Jupiter. It is occupied by numerous irregularly shaped bodies called asteroids or minor planets...

 asteroid with a diameter of 17.42 kilometers.

The asteroid is scheduled to occlude a 9.1 magnitude star in the Leo constellation

Leo (constellation)

Leo is one of the constellations of the zodiac. Its name is Latin for lion. Its symbol is . Leo lies between dim Cancer to the west and Virgo to the east.-Stars:...

 on November 30, 2008, dimming the magnitude of both heavenly bodies for a maximum duration of 0.6 seconds. Astronomer

Astronomer

An astronomer is a scientist who studies celestial bodies such as planets, stars and galaxies.Historically, astronomy was more concerned with the classification and description of phenomena in the sky, while astrophysics attempted to explain these phenomena and the differences between them using...

s had, as of March 2008, not predicted an optimal trajectory for the event.

Lyudmila Zhuravlyova is ranked number 43 in Harvard's ranking of those who discovered minor planet

Minor planet

An asteroid group or minor-planet group is a population of minor planets that have a share broadly similar orbits. Members are generally unrelated to each other, unlike in an asteroid family, which often results from the break-up of a single asteroid...

s. She discovered 200 minor planets, thirteen of which were co-discoveries, between 1972 and 1992.