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
Today is the anniversary of the birth, at Weil der Stadt in south-west Germany on 27 Dec 1571, of the astronomer and mathematician Johannes Kepler. He is probably best remembered today for his three fundamental laws of planetary motion, which can be said to have established our modern view of the Solar System and paved the way for Isaac Newton. The 32 km diameter lunar crater Kepler, located between Oceanus Procellarum to the west and Mare Insularum to the east, is named in his honour. Credit: societyforthehistoryofastronomy.com
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,...
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