Lyudmila Karachkina

Lyudmila Georgievna Karachkina (Людмила Георгиевна Карачкина, born 3 September 1948, Rostov-on-Don) is an astronomer and discoverer of minor planets.

In 1978 she began as a staff astronomer of the Institute for Theoretical Astronomy (ITA) at Leningrad. Her research at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory (CrAO) then focused on astrometry and photometry of minor planets. The Minor Planet Center credits her with the discovery of 130 minor planets, including the Amor asteroid 5324 Lyapunov and the Trojan asteroid 3063 Makhaon. In 2004, she received a Ph.D. in astronomy from Odesa I. I. Mechnikov National University.

Lyudmila Karachkina has two daughters, Maria and Renata. The inner main-belt asteroid 8019 Karachkina, discovered by German astronomers Lutz D. Schmadel and Freimut Börngen at Tautenburg on 14 October 1990, was named in her honor (M.P.C. 35489). On 23 November 1999, the minor planet 8089 Yukar was named after her husband, Yurij Vasil'evicht Karachkin (b.&thinsp;1940), a physics teacher at CrAO's school.(M.P.C. 36946).