In the name of Science

Name: George Eric Deacon Alcock Birth: 28 Aug 1912 Palace: Peterborough, Northamptonshire     Today is the anniversary of the birth of the English schoolteacher and amateur astronomer George Eric Deacon Alcock. A Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, the Royal Geographical Society, and the Royal Meteorological Society, he became interested in astronomy at a very early age and was destined to become one of the world’s most successful visual discoverers of novae and comets, with a total of 10 major discoveries to his name. He started his search for comets in 1953, his first success being the discovery of Comet Alcock 1959 IV in 1959, an achievement that was followed a few days later by his discovery of Comet Alcock 1959 VI and further comet discoveries in 1963 and 1965, culminating in his final (co)-discovery, that of Comet 1983 VII IRAS-Araki-Alcock (pictured) which he picked up with 15 x 80 binoculars on 3 May 1983.  His search for novae began in 1955, his first succ

Name: Christoph Scheiner Birth: 25 Jul 1573 place: in Wald,Mindelheim,Germany       Today is the anniversary of the birth of the German Jesuit scholar, astronomer and mathematician Christoph Scheiner. One of the first to use the newly-invented telescope for astronomical observations Scheiner is probably best remembered for the co-discovery of sunspots in 1611 and for being one of the first astronomers to carry out systematic observation of sunspot activity.  The 110 km diameter lunar crater Scheiner, located in the densely cratered region west of the walled plain Clavius, is named in his honour.

Name: Hans Christian Adamson Birth: 20 Jul 1890 Place: Varde, Denmark     Today is the anniversary of the birth of the Danish-born American writer Hans Christian Adamson. He is probably best remembered by astronomers as editor of ‘The Hayden Planetarium Bulletin’ and ‘The Sky’ (two of the ancestors of Sky & Telescope).  The Hayden Planetarium Bulletin was issued as a monthly publication by the American Museum of Natural History from November 1935 to October 1936, following the opening of the Hayden Planetarium. Within twelve months the bulletin had become a full-size magazine and was renamed ‘The Sky’, featuring well-illustrated articles written by astronomers from across the world.  Hans Christian Adamson edited The Sky from October 1937 to February 1938, at which point George Clyde Fisher, head of the Hayden Planetarium, took over the role.

Name: Venetia Katharine Douglas Phair Birth:  11 Jul 1918 Place:  Oxford, Oxfordshire, England     Today is the anniversary of the birth of Venetia Katharine Douglas Phair, née Burney. An accountant and teacher by profession,   she is known for suggesting the name Pluto for the planet discovered by the American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh in 1930 . After reading about the discovery in The Times she suggested the name Pluto, after the Roman God of the Underworld. The suggestion was sent to Clyde Tombaugh at Lowell Observatory who approved it, the new name being adopted for the planet in May 1930.  The asteroid 6235 Burney, discovered in November 1987, is named in her honour, as is the 296 km diameter crater Burney on Pluto, identified from data returned by the New Horizons spacecraft during its flyby of the planet in July 2015.

  Today is the anniversary of the birth, at Houston, Texas on 10 Jan 1936, of the American radio astronomer Robert Woodro w Wilson.    A graduate of the California Institute of Technology, he is best remembered for being the co-discoverer in 1964, along with the German-born American physicist and radio astronomer Arno Allan Penzias, of the cosmic microwave background radiation, which helped to establish the Big Bang theory of the origin of the Universe. In recognition of the discovery, Wilson and Penzias were presented with the Henry Draper Medal (awarded by the United States National Academy of Sciences) in 1977 and the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1978.   Image From google images  Credit: societyforthehistoryofastronomy.com

Today is the anniversary of the discovery, on 5 Jan 2005 by astronomers Michael E. Brown, Chadwick A. Trujillo and David L. Rabinowitz, of the dwarf planet Eris , a trans-Neptunian object with a diameter of around 2,325 kilometres (1,445 miles) and which orbits the Sun once every 557 years. Eris lies at an average distance from the Sun equal to around 1.72 times that of Pluto and has one known moon, Dysnomia, seen here just to the left of Eris on an image taken with the Hubble Space Telescope in 2007. Eris is notable in that it has been found to have a mass greater than Pluto, eventually leading to Pluto's demotion from planet status in August 2006, when the International Astronomical Union (IAU) downgraded Pluto to a ‘dwarf planet’.