Jean-Louis Pons
Jean-Louis Pons (24 December 176114 October 1831) was a French astronomer. Despite humble beginnings and being self-taught, he went on to become the greatest visual comet discoverer of all time: between 1801 and 1827 Pons discovered thirty-seven comets, more than any other person in history. Pons worked at three observatories in his career, Marseille Observatory, where he was also trained, a short-lived observatory at Royal Park La Marlia in Tuscany, and finally at an observatory in Florence. Pons's work supported some famous comet recoveries of the 19th century, including Encke's Comet and Crommelin's Comet. However, most of the comets he discovered had parabolic orbits and would not return for a time as long as several millennia. Early life Pons was born in Peyre, Hautes-Alpes, to a poor family; he received little formal education. In 1789, he began working for the Marseille Observatory as a caretaker, and gradually gained some experience in assisting the astronomers with ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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La Piarre
La Piarre (; oc, La Piara) is a commune in the Hautes-Alpes department in southeastern France. Population See also *Communes of the Hautes-Alpes department The following is a list of the 162 communes of the Hautes-Alpes department of France. The communes cooperate in the following intercommunalities (as of 2020):Communes of Hautes-Alpes {{HautesAlpes-geo-stub ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Lucca
Lucca ( , ) is a city and ''comune'' in Tuscany, Central Italy, on the Serchio River, in a fertile plain near the Ligurian Sea. The city has a population of about 89,000, while its province has a population of 383,957. Lucca is known as one of the Italian's "Città d'arte" (Arts town), thanks to its intact Renaissance-era city walls and its very well preserved historic center, where, among other buildings and monuments, are located the Piazza dell'Anfiteatro, which has its origins in the second half of the 1st century A.D. and the Guinigi Tower, a tower that dates from the 1300s. The city is also the birthplace of numerous world-class composers, including Giacomo Puccini, Alfredo Catalani, and Luigi Boccherini. Toponymy By the Romans, Lucca was known as ''Luca''. From more recent and concrete toponymic studies, the name Lucca has references that lead to "sacred wood" (Latin: ''lucus''), "to cut" (Latin: ''lucare'') and "luminous space" (''leuk'', a term used by the firs ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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18th-century French Astronomers
The 18th century lasted from January 1, 1701 ( MDCCI) to December 31, 1800 ( MDCCC). During the 18th century, elements of Enlightenment thinking culminated in the American, French, and Haitian Revolutions. During the century, slave trading and human trafficking expanded across the shores of the Atlantic, while declining in Russia, China, and Korea. Revolutions began to challenge the legitimacy of monarchical and aristocratic power structures, including the structures and beliefs that supported slavery. The Industrial Revolution began during mid-century, leading to radical changes in human society and the environment. Western historians have occasionally defined the 18th century otherwise for the purposes of their work. For example, the "short" 18th century may be defined as 1715–1789, denoting the period of time between the death of Louis XIV of France and the start of the French Revolution, with an emphasis on directly interconnected events. To historians who expand ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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1831 Deaths
Events January–March * January 1 – William Lloyd Garrison begins publishing '' The Liberator'', an anti-slavery newspaper, in Boston, Massachusetts. * January 10 – Japanese department store, Takashimaya in Kyoto established. * February–March – Revolts in Modena, Parma and the Papal States are put down by Austrian troops. * February 2 – Pope Gregory XVI succeeds Pope Pius VIII, as the 254th pope. * February 5 – Dutch naval lieutenant Jan van Speyk blows up his own gunboat in Antwerp rather than strike his colours on the demand of supporters of the Belgian Revolution. * February 7 – The Belgian Constitution of 1831 is approved by the National Congress. *February 8 - Aimé Bonpland leaves Paraguay. * February 14 – Battle of Debre Abbay: Ras Marye of Yejju marches into Tigray, and defeats and kills the warlord Sabagadis. * February 25 – Battle of Olszynka Grochowska (Grochów): Polish rebel forces divide a Ru ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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1761 Births
Events January–March * January 14 – Third Battle of Panipat: Ahmad Shah Durrani and his coalition decisively defeat the Maratha Confederacy, and restore the Mughal Empire to Shah Alam II. * January 16 – Siege of Pondicherry (1760) ended: The British capture Pondichéry, India from the French. * February 8 – An earthquake in London breaks chimneys in Limehouse and Poplar. * March 8 – A second earthquake occurs in North London, Hampstead and Highgate. * March 31 – 1761 Portugal earthquake: A magnitude 8.5 earthquake strikes Lisbon, Portugal, with effects felt as far north as Scotland. April–June * April 1 – The Austrian Empire and the Russian Empire sign a new treaty of alliance. * April 4 – A severe epidemic of influenza breaks out in London and "practically the entire population of the city" is afflicted; particularly contagious to pregnant women, the disease causes an unusual number of miscarriages and prema ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Comet Pons-Brooks
A comet is an icy, small Solar System body that, when passing close to the Sun, warms and begins to release gases, a process that is called outgassing. This produces a visible atmosphere or coma, and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena are due to the effects of solar radiation and the solar wind acting upon the nucleus of the comet. Comet nuclei range from a few hundred meters to tens of kilometers across and are composed of loose collections of ice, dust, and small rocky particles. The coma may be up to 15 times Earth's diameter, while the tail may stretch beyond one astronomical unit. If sufficiently bright, a comet may be seen from Earth without the aid of a telescope and may subtend an arc of 30° (60 Moons) across the sky. Comets have been observed and recorded since ancient times by many cultures and religions. Comets usually have highly eccentric elliptical orbits, and they have a wide range of orbital periods, ranging from several years to potentially several milli ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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French Academy Of Sciences
The French Academy of Sciences (French: ''Académie des sciences'') is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV of France, Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French Scientific method, scientific research. It was at the forefront of scientific developments in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, and is one of the earliest Academy of Sciences, Academies of Sciences. Currently headed by Patrick Flandrin (President of the Academy), it is one of the five Academies of the Institut de France. History The Academy of Sciences traces its origin to Colbert's plan to create a general academy. He chose a small group of scholars who met on 22 December 1666 in the King's library, near the present-day Bibliothèque nationale de France, Bibliothèque Nationals, and thereafter held twice-weekly working meetings there in the two rooms assigned to the group. The first 30 years of the Academy's existence were relatively informal ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Andrew Crommelin
Andrew Claude de la Cherois Crommelin (6 February 1865 – 20 September 1939) was an astronomer of French and Huguenot descent who was born in Cushendun, County Antrim, Ireland. He was educated in England at Marlborough College and Trinity College, Cambridge. After a spell teaching at Lancing College he found permanent employment at the Royal Greenwich Observatory in 1891. He joined the Royal Astronomical Society in 1888 and was its president from 1929-1931. In 1895 he joined the British Astronomical Association and was president from 1904-1906 and directed its comet section 1898-1901 and 1907-1938. In 1910 for their studies of Halley’s Comet Crommelin and Philip Herbert Cowell jointly received the Prix Jules Janssen from the Société astronomique de France. For this work they also received the Lindemann prize of the Astronomische Gesellschaft in Germany. In 1914 Crommelin published an introductory book on astronomy “The Star World”. Crommelin had four children, of ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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27P/Crommelin
Comet Crommelin, also known as Comet Pons-Coggia-Winnecke-Forbes, is a periodic comet with an orbital period of almost 28 years. It fits the classical definition of a Halley-type comet with (20 years < < 200 years). It is named after the Andrew C. D. Crommelin who calculated its orbit in 1930. It is one of only four comets not named after their discoverer(s), the other three being Comets [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Johann Franz Encke
Johann Franz Encke (; 23 September 179126 August 1865) was a German astronomer. Among his activities, he worked on the calculation of the periods of comets and asteroids, measured the distance from the Earth to the Sun, and made observations of the planet Saturn. Biography Encke was born in Hamburg, where his father was the Pastor at St. James' Church, Hamburg. He was the youngest of eight children, and at the time his father died, when he was four years old, the family was in straitened circumstances. Thanks to the financial assistance of a teacher, he was able to be educated at the Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums. He studied mathematics and astronomy from 1811 at the University of Göttingen under Carl Friedrich Gauss, but he enlisted in the Hanseatic Legion The Hanseatic Legion was a military unit, first formed of a group of citizens from Hamburg. They had met in 1813 on the instigation of General Friedrich Karl von Tettenborn, in order to fight in the War of the Sixth ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Comet Encke
Comet Encke , or Encke's Comet (official designation: 2P/Encke), is a periodic comet that completes an orbit of the Sun once every 3.3 years. (This is the shortest period of a reasonably bright comet; the faint main-belt comet 311P/PanSTARRS has a period of 3.2 years.) Encke was first recorded by Pierre Méchain on 17 January 1786, but it was not recognized as a periodic comet until 1819 when its orbit was computed by Johann Franz Encke. Like Halley's Comet, it is unusual in its being named after the calculator of its orbit rather than its discoverer. Like most comets, it has a very low albedo, reflecting only 4.6% of the light its comet nucleus, nucleus receives, although comets generate a large coma (cometary), coma and tail that can make them much more visible during their perihelion (closest approach to the Sun). The diameter of the nucleus of Encke's Comet is 4.8 km. Discovery As its official designation implies, Encke's Comet was the first periodic comet discovered af ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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273P/Pons–Gambart
273P/Pons–Gambart, also called Comet Pons-Gambart, is a short-period comet first discovered on June 21, 1827 by Jean-Louis Pons and Jean-Félix Adolphe Gambart. It has a 186 year orbit. It fits the classical definition of a Halley-type comet with (20 years < < 200 years). It was lost and was not recovered until November 7, 2012, when amateur astronomer Rob Matson discovered a comet, and it was identified that the pre-recovery short-arc orbital calculations for Pons-Gambart were completely wrong because the comet only had a 1-month with poor data. The original name when first discovered ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |