Today is the anniversary of the birth, at Woolsthorpe, near Grantham, Lincolnshire on 25 Dec 1642, of the English physicist, mathematician and astronomer Sir Isaac Newton . Although his achievements were many, he is probably best remembered for his ‘Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica’ (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy). Often referred to as ‘The Principia’ and widely considered as being one of the most important works in the history of science, its contents i ncluded details of Newton's laws of motion (which went on to form the basis of classical mechanics) together with his famous law of universal gravitation. The 79 km diameter lunar crater Newton, located in the south polar region close to the southern limb of the Moon, and seen here with the satellite crater Newton D overlying its north-northeastern rim, is named in his honour. Credit: societyforthehistoryofastronomy.com
Name: Laurent Cassegrain Birth: around 1629 Birthplace: Chartres,France Today is the anniversary of the Birth of the French Catholic priest and instrument maker Laurent Cassegrain. Although this image may be a likeness of Laurent Cassegrain, no verifiable portrait of him is known to exist. he is best known to astronomers as being the probable inventor of a type of reflecting telescope which uses a combination of a primary concave mirror and a secondary convex mirror . Now known as the Cassegrain reflector, Cassegrain’s design first appeared in the 25 Apr 1672 issue (pictured) of Le Journal des Sçavans (established by French writer Denis de Sallo in 1665 and the earliest academic journal published in Europe). The 55 km diameter lunar crater Cassegrain, located to the south east of the larger crater Lebedev on the far side of the Moon and seen here immediately to the lower right of image centre, is named in his honour.
Today is the anniversary of the death, in Hamburg on 1 Dec 1935, of the German optician Bernhard Woldemar Schmidt. He is famous for inventing, in 1930, the telescope type that now bears his name and which allows astronomers to obtain sharp wide-field images of the sky with a single exposure. . The most famous example of the Schmidt telescope design is the 48-inch Samuel Oschin Telescope at Palomar Observatory (pictured), which was completed in 1948. Taking its first official im age in September of that year, data from this instrument contributed towards the initial guide star catalogue for the Hubble Space Telescope The 11 km diameter lunar crater Schmidt, located near the south western shore of Mare Tranquillitatis and seen here at lower left of image with the nearby craters Ritter (upper left of centre) and Sabine (right of centre), is named in his honour and in honour of the German astronomer and geophysicist Johann Friedrich Julius Schmidt and the Soviet scientist,...
Comments
Post a Comment