By Adam Daniel Mezei

For the Post

When Kamil Hornoch opened up his mailbox in late May, the amateur stargazer hardly expected to find an envelope that would change the face of Czech astronomy.

But inside there was an unprecedented announcement: The Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP), based in San Francisco, had voted to award the 33-year-old Moravian its prestigious Amateur Astronomer of the Year Award for 2006. It was the first time the award had ever been given to a Czech.

Hornoch was over the moon with the news. He had managed to secure the honor (and an accompanying $500 honorarium) with nothing more elaborate than a homemade backyard telescope on a Meade equatorial mount, and an astronomer's CCD (charge-coupled device) camera.

The official announcement of the award was made two months later, at the International Astronomical Union's (IAU's) triennial convention in Prague, where the planetary fate of Pluto and three other celestial objects was being decided. Hornoch spent two days at the conference, where suddenly his name was among the leading lights in Czech astronomy — even though he's not a professional astronomer.

But in terms of achievement, the award was well-deserved. Since 2002, Hornoch has independently discovered and accurately plotted over 40 previously unknown novae (exploding stars) in the M31 galaxy. And now he says he's hot on the trail of over 30 additional candidate novas in another galaxy called M81.

Under Venus' spell

Hornoch credits the 1980s Czech television series Okna vesmíru dokořán, (The Wide-open Windows of the Universe), hosted by Dr. Jiří Grygar, for his obsession with the stars.

"My original interest in astronomy was sparked while watching Dr. Grygar's TV series when I was about 10 years old," he says. "I joined the Young Astronomer's Club in Brno when I was 12, and it was there that I first saw the planet Venus with the club's modest 15-centimeter telescope. The sight impressed me so much that I decided right on the spot that I wanted nothing more in my life than to be an astronomer/observer. And so that's what I became."

Observing is what Hornoch does best. According to the ASP Web site, the amateur astronomer's list of publications is staggeringly long, with some 377 abstracts to his credit, all archived on NASA's Astrophysics Data System (ADS), a repository that stockpiles more than 4.9 million data records.

Hornoch politely deflects questions about whether the ASP award might be his personal ticket to astronomical superstardom. Instead, the self-effacing Lelekovice resident defers to his professional colleagues.

"Of course, receiving the award was a tremendous surprise, especially when I looked up the names of the previous winners on the Web and I realized its significance," he says. "But I don't consider the award as just my claim to fame. It's a major coup for the entire Czech community of astronomers, of which I'm just a small part. The work of astronomers such as the Czech Astronomical Institute's Dr. Petr Pravec, and the group led by Dr. Pavel Spurný and Dr. Jiří Borovička, currently in search of bright meteors, or bolides, is truly of international caliber."

Along with his colleagues from the Czech Astronomical Institute, Hornoch occasionally volunteers his services to cross-functional teams from the United States, Italy, Germany and Spain. Whether he can make the jump to those professional circles remains to be seen.

"Time will yet tell where I'll be headed in astronomy," he says. "Sure, I'd definitely like to see those huge telescopes in Chile, Hawaii or the Canary Islands with my own eyes, even though I don't think I'll be taking measurements with such telescopes myself. On the other hand, I wouldn't have believed that I'd be awarded such a significant prize by the ASP. So I suppose we'll see."

A bright future

Winners of the ASP Amateur Achievement Award, which has been bestowed annually since its inception in 1979, have been largely from North America — about 60 percent of the 27 awards have gone to amateur astronomers in the United States and Canada. The remainder have hailed from other parts of the European Union, as well as Japan, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.

While disavowing any personal notoriety, Hornoch believes his award does herald better things to come for the practice of his craft.

"Astronomy has a bright future in the Czech lands, that's for sure," he says. "We can build on our own rich history — astronomers like Johannes Kepler, Tycho Brahe, and Tadeáš Hájek of Hájek. But thankfully we can now also benefit from wider cooperative opportunities available with teams, universities and observatories from abroad. I also believe that [Czech] government funding and support for science and astronomy is on the rise, and someday might approach the level of the more developed EU nations and perhaps even the United States."

Does Hornoch have any aspirations to relocate to such places?

"For now, I'll just be working as an advanced technician in Ondřejov, taking measurements of the night sky with the observatory's 65-centimeter telescope," he says. "And I'll continue my present research, just to a lesser extent."

It seems a modest pursuit. But like the scrappy "dwarf planet" Pluto, Hornoch's — and through him, the Czech Republic's — amazing achievements now punch far above their combined weight.