Word Finder - astronomer

definition

One who studies astronomy, the stars or the physical universe; a scientist whose area of research is astronomy or astrophysics

Sir William Herschel was the first astronomer who measured position angles; the instrument he employed is described in Phil.

By the end of 1771 his scientific reputation was such that he was suggested for the post of "astronomer" to Captain Cook's second expedition to the South Seas, but his unorthodox opinions were objectionable to certain members of the board of longitude and the appointment was not ratified.

Astronomer comes from the Latin word astra, which means stars; and astronomers are men who study the stars, and tell us about them.

He became Astronomer Royal in Cape Colony in 1879 and retained that post till 1902.

See David Gill, Man and Astronomer, by George Forbes (1916).

At nineteen he was appointed astronomer royal of Berlin.

When her brother accepted the office of astronomer to George III., she became his constant assistant in his observations, and also executed the laborious calculations which were connected with them.

The first volume (in two parts) is a detailed biography of the great astronomer; the second includes some of his minor writings and correspondence, family records, and historical documents of local interest.

Gabir ben Aflah of Sevilla, commonly called Geber, was a celebrated astronomer and apparently skilled in algebra, for it has been supposed that the word " algebra " is compounded from his name.

Leonardo certainly was in relation with some persons belonging to that circle when he published in 1220 another more extensive work, De practica geometriae, which he dedicated to the imperial astronomer Dominicus Hispanus.

Ganessa, an eminent astronomer, mathematician and scholiast of Bhaskara, quotes this work and makes separate mention of the cuttaca (" pulveriser "), a device for effecting the solution of indeterminate equations.

The astronomer specialized in studying themagnitudeof stars are classifying their brightness.

King, chief astronomer of the Dominion, was established in 1909.

He was the son of Pheidias, an astronomer, and was on intimate terms with, if not related to, Hiero, king of Syracuse, and Gelo his son.

In the beginning of May 1852, when the government of Louis Napoleon required an oath of allegiance from all its functionaries, Arago peremptorily refused, and sent in his resignation of his post as astronomer at the Bureau des Longitudes.

What is thus shown to be possible would, of course, be necessary if we went on, with the astronomer Kepler, to identify the star of the Magi with the conjunction of the planets Jupiter and Saturn which occurred, in the constellation Pisces, in May, October and December of 7 B.C.'

The constellation is made of faint stars and has very little to offer the amateur astronomer.

Thus a comet may be encountered in the morning dawn or evening twilight, and without such an adjunct the astronomer may lose the whole available opportunity for observation in the vain endeavour to find a suitable comparison-star.

It was endowed by Dr Francis Andrews, provost of Trinity College, was erected in 1785, and in 1791 was placed by statute under the management of the royal astronomer of Ireland, whose official residence is here.

From 1847 to 1862 he was advising astronomer to the headquarters of the army and navy; chairman of the International Astronomical Congress from 1867-1878; acting president of the International Metric Commission in 1872; and president of the International Congress for a Photographic Survey of the Stars in 1887, in which year he was also made a privy councillor.

Payments of arrears, now amounting to upwards of 4000 florins, was not, however, in the desperate condition of the imperial finances, to be hoped for; and he was glad, while retaining his position as court astronomer, to accept (in 1612) the office of mathematician to the states of Upper Austria.

Encke, the astronomer who first investigated its orbit and showed its periodicity.

He acknowledged the genius of the astronomer, and had not approved of the action of the Inquisition in 1616; but subsequently, believing himself to have been caricatured in the Dialogo, he permitted the Inquisition to have its way and to compel an abjuration (1633).

These services were recognized by the award of the Royal Astronomical Society's gold medal in 1869, and on the resignation of Sir Thomas Maclear in 1870 he was appointed Her Majesty's astronomer at the Cape.

An autobiography, Reminiscences of an Astronomer, appeared in 2903; and a bibliography of his writings is given by Mr Archibald in the Trans.

The hair having by some unknown means disappeared, Conon of Samos, the mathematician and astronomer, explained the phenomenon in courtly phrase, by saying that it had been carried to the heavens and placed among the stars.

In the interior of the church the tomb of the astronomer Tycho Brahe is notable, as is thevery ancient pulpit from which the Hussite archbishop John of Rokycan preached.

As early as 1839 a scheme of public schools, drawn up by Sir John Herschel, the astronomer, came into operation, and was continued until 1865, when a more comprehensive scheme was adopted.

It is under the control of a royal astronomer and its expenses are defrayed by the British admiralty.

The change from slave to free labour proved to be advantageous to the farmers in the western provinces; an efficient educational system, which owed its initiation to Sir John Herschel, the astronomer (who lived in Cape Colony from 1834 to 1838), was adopted; Road Boards were established and did much good work; to the staple industries - the growing of wheat, the rearing of cattle and the making of wine - was added sheepraising; and by 1846 wool became the most valuable export from the country.

Having detected an important defect in one of Laplace's demonstrations, he was induced by a friend to write out his remarks, that they might be shown to Dr John Brinkley (1763-1835), afterwards bishop of Cloyne, but who was then the first royal astronomer for Ireland, and an accomplished mathematician.

He was not specially fitted for the post, for although he had a profound acquaintance with theoretical astronomy, he had paid but little attention to the regular work of the practical astronomer.

His early observations were made at the rectory of Wanstead in Essex, under the tutelage of his uncle, the Rev. James Pound (1669-1724), himself a skilled astronomer, and he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society on the 6th of November 1718.

He had meantime (in 1742) been appointed to succeed Edmund Halley as astronomer royal; his enhanced reputation enabled him to apply successfully for an instrumental outfit at a cost of 1000; and with an 8-foot quadrant completed for him in 1750 by John Bird (1709-1776), he accumulated at Greenwich in ten years materials of inestimable value for the reform of astronomy.

On the death of Lord Rosse two years later he became professor of mathematics in Dublin University and in 1874 Royal Astronomer of Ireland.

Eusebius accepted the small bishopric of Emesa (the modern Horns) in Phoenicia, but his powers as mathematician and astronomer led his flock to accuse him of practising sorcery, and he had to flee to Laodicea.

At Paris he met men of science and letters - Peter Guenellon, the well-known Amsterdam physician; Ole Romer, the Danish astronomer; Thoynard, the critic; Melchisedech Thevenot, the traveller; Henri Justel, the jurist; and Francois Bernier, the expositor of Gassendi.

In a certain sense we may say that the universe now presents itself to the thinking astronomer, not as a heterogeneous collection of bodies, but as a unified whole.

When an astronomer has made an observation, it still has to be " reduced," and this commonly requires more labour than that involved in making it.

But even this labour may be small compared with that of the theoretical astronomer, who, in the future, is to use the result as the raw material of his work.

Theoretical Astronomy is that branch of the science which, making use of the results of astronomical observations as they are supplied by the practical astronomer, investigates the motions of the heavenly bodies.

The problem of determining the perturbations of the (2) Q heavenly bodies is perhaps the most complicated with which the mathematical astronomer has to grapple; and the forms under which it has to be studied are so numerous that they cannot be easily arranged under any one head.

Having effected this reduction, and computed the correction to be applied to the observation in order to eliminate all known errors to which the instrument is liable, the work of the practical astronomer is completed.

Edmund Halley, the second astronomer royal, devoted most of his official attention to the moon.

The fourth astronomer royal, Nathaniel Bliss, provided in two years a sequel of Bliss.

More immediately efficacious was the innovation made by John Pond (astronomer royal, 1811-1836) of substituting entire circles for quadrants.

Although Tycho Brahe was an original discoverer of this inequality, through whom it became known, Joseph Bertrand of Paris claimed the discovery for Abu 'l-Wefa, an Arabian astronomer, and made it appear that the latter really detected inequalities in the moon's motion which we now know to have been the variation.

This latter problem received the attention of the Arabian astronomer Abul Wefa (loth century A.D.), who solved it with a single opening of the compasses.

This task Castelli, who was a steady friend and disciple of the Tuscan astronomer, seems to have discharged with moderation and success.

At the end of that time he appeared in public with his Saggiatore, a polemical treatise written in reply to the Libra astronomica of Padre Grassi (under the pseudonym of Lotario Sarsi), the Jesuit astronomer of the Collegio Romano.