It appears he is a professor of Math and Physics but not astronomy. If this is the case, he is just a professional who is quite involved with amateur astronomy. This observatory may be run by him but he is not a full time professional. I also did a quick check on him and I noticed that he had some images back in 1996 of Comet Hale-Bopp that were being used to suggest an object was following the comet. I can't tell if he was the source of somebody got his images and used them. The image I saw showed an artifact that was obviously dust on the CCD sensor. When I see this, I become increasingly skeptical. He also did not report his observations to the IAU and instead ran to the media to report his "find" just like Chuck Shramek of the Hale-Bopp companion fame. Makes you begin to really wonder about his methods.