|
William Stephen Jacob
William Stephen Jacob (1813–1862) was an English immigrant astronomer in India, who acted as the director of the Madras Observatory from 1848 to 1859. His early claim of 1855 to have detected an exoplanet, in orbit around 70 Ophiuchi, is now thought to have been mistaken. Life The seventh child of Stephen Long Jacob (1764–1851), vicar of Woolavington, Somerset, he was born at his father's vicarage on 19 November 1813; John Jacob (1812–1858) was his brother, and Sir George le Grand Jacob a cousin. He entered Addiscombe College as an East India Company cadet in 1828, passed for the engineers, and completed his military education at Royal Engineer Establishment, Chatham. After Jacob's arrival at Bombay in 1831, he spent some years with the Great trigonometrical survey in the North-West Provinces, and established a private observatory at Pune in 1842. Bad health meant he took sick leave at the Cape of Good Hope. He became assistant to Andrew Scott Waugh, but again fell i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Madras Observatory
The Madras Observatory was an astronomical observatory which had its origins in a private observatory set up by William Petrie in 1786 and later moved and managed by the British East India Company from 1792 in Madras (now known as Chennai). The main purpose for establishing it was to assist in navigation and mapping by recording the latitude and maintaining time standards. In later years the observatory also made observations on stars and geomagnetism. The observatory ran from around 1792 to 1931 and a major work was the production of a comprehensive catalogue of stars. History The observatory was established due to the efforts of William Petrie, an amateur astronomer who had a small private observatory at Egmore in Madras. Petrie's original observatory was established in 1786 and was made of iron and timber. In 1789, Petrie gifted his instruments to the Madras Government before retiring to England. Sir Charles Oakley accepted Petrie's plea to establish an official observatory ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Noël Paymal Lerebours
Noël Marie Paymal Lerebours (16 February 1807 – 23 July 1873) was a French optician and daguerreotypist. He is best known today for his ''Excursions Daguerriennes'', books of views of the world's monuments, based on early photographs redrawn by hand as Aquatint engravings. Early life Lerebours was born in Paris of an unknown father. His mother, Marie Jeanne Françoise Paymal, a seamstress from Vitry-sur-Marne, worked in Rue Froidmanteau, Tuileries, Paris. She married Jean Lerebours, an optician, who adopted the child on 11 June 1836. On the death of his adoptive father, Lerebours took over the optician's shop in the Place du Pont-Neuf and formed a partnership with Marc Secretan in 1845, the firm being known as ''Lerebours et Secretan''. As well as producing high quality lenses and glasses for astronomical observatories, during the years 1840-1850 Lerebours was equally interested in improving daguerreotype photography. Career In the autumn of 1839, Lerebours used his skil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dodabetta
Doddabetta is the highest mountain in the Nilgiri Mountains at 2,637 metres (8,652 feet). There is a reserved forest area around the peak. It is 9 km from Ooty, on the Ooty-Kotagiri Road in the Nilgiris District of Tamil Nadu, India. It is a popular tourist attraction with road access to the summit. It is the fourth highest peak in South India next to Anamudi, Mannamalai and Meesapulimala. The peaks Hecuba (2375 m), Kattadadu (2418 m) and Kulkudi (2439 m) are the three closely linked summits in the west of the Doddabetta range near to Udagamandalam. Flora The area surrounding Doddabetta is mostly forested. Sholas cover the hollows of its slopes. Slightly stunted, rhododendron trees, in the midst of thick coarse grass, flowering sub-alpine shrubs and herbs are common, even very near the peak. Telescope House There is an observatory at the top of Doddabetta with two telescopes available for the public. It was opened on 18 June 1983 and is run by the Tamil Nadu Tourism ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Singapore
Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bordering the Strait of Malacca to the west, the Singapore Strait to the south, the South China Sea to the east, and the Straits of Johor to the north. The country's territory is composed of one main island, 63 satellite islands and islets, and one outlying islet; the combined area of these has increased by 25% since the country's independence as a result of extensive land reclamation projects. It has the third highest population density in the world. With a multicultural population and recognising the need to respect cultural identities of the major ethnic groups within the nation, Singapore has four official languages: English, Malay, Mandarin, and Tamil. English is the lingua franca and numerous public services are available only in Eng ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Breen (astronomer)
James Breen (5 July 1826 – 25 August 1866) was an Irish astronomer. Breen was the second son of Hugh Breen, senior, who superintended the lunar reductions at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. He was born at Armagh, in Ireland, 5 July 1826, was engaged at the age of sixteen as a calculator at Greenwich, and exchanged the post for that of assistant in the Cambridge Observatory in August 1846. In 1854 he published ''The Planetary Worlds: the Topography and Telescopic Appearance of the Sun, Planets, Moon, and Comets'', a useful little work suggested by discussions on the plurality of worlds, showing considerable acquaintance with the history of the subject, as well as the practical familiarity conferred by the use of one of the finest refractors then in existence. After twelve years' zealous cooperation with James Challis, he resigned his appointment towards the close of 1858, and cultivated literature in Paris until 1860, when he went to Spain, and observed the total solar ecl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Lassell
William Lassell (18 June 1799 – 5 October 1880) was an English merchant and astronomer.AN 98(1881) 108 He is remembered for his improvements to the and his ensuing discoveries of four planetary satellites. Life William Lassell was born in , . He was educated fir ...[...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jupiter
Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the List of Solar System objects by size, largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, but slightly less than one-thousandth the mass of the Sun. Jupiter is the List of brightest natural objects in the sky, third brightest natural object in the Earth's night sky after the Moon and Venus, and it has been observed since Pre-history, prehistoric times. It was named after the Jupiter (mythology), Roman god Jupiter, the king of the gods. Jupiter is primarily composed of hydrogen, but helium constitutes one-quarter of its mass and one-tenth of its volume. It probably has a rocky core of heavier elements, but, like the other giant planets in the Solar System, it lacks a well-defined solid surface. The ongoing contraction of Jupiter's interior generates more heat than it receives from the Sun. Because of its rapid rotation, the planet' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Satellites Of Saturn
The moons of Saturn are numerous and diverse, ranging from tiny moonlets only tens of meters across to enormous Titan (moon), Titan, which is larger than the planet Mercury (planet), Mercury. Saturn has 83 natural satellite, moons with confirmed orbits that are not embedded in its Rings of Saturn, rings—of which only 13 have diameters greater than 50 kilometers—as well as dense rings that contain millions of embedded moonlets and innumerable smaller ring particles. Seven Saturnian moons are large enough to have collapsed into a relaxed, ellipsoidal shape, though only one or two of those, Titan and possibly Rhea (moon), Rhea, are currently in hydrostatic equilibrium. Particularly notable among Saturn's moons are Titan, the second-List of natural satellites, largest moon in the Solar System (after Jupiter's Ganymede (moon), Ganymede), with a Atmosphere of Titan#Composition, nitrogen-rich Earth-like Atmosphere of Titan, atmosphere and a landscape featuring dry river networks and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alpha Herculis
Alpha Herculis (α Herculis, abbreviated Alpha Her, α Her), also designated 64 Herculis, is a multiple star system in the constellation of Hercules. Appearing as a single point of light to the naked eye, it is resolvable into a number of components through a telescope. It has a combined apparent magnitude of 3.08, although the brightest component is variable in brightness. Based on parallax measurements obtained during the Hipparcos mission, it is approximately 360 light-years (110 parsecs) distant from the Sun. System Alpha Herculis is a triple star system. The primary (brightest) of the three stars, designated α1 Herculis or α Herculis A, is a pulsating variable star on the asymptotic giant branch (AGB), and is the second nearest AGB star after Mira. The primary star forms a visual binary pair with a second star, which is itself a spectroscopic binary. Alpha Herculis also forms the A and B components of a wider system designated WDS J17146+1423, with ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stellar Parallax
Stellar parallax is the apparent shift of position of any nearby star (or other object) against the background of distant objects, and a basis for determining (through trigonometry) the distance of the object. Created by the different orbital positions of Earth, the extremely small observed shift is largest at time intervals of about six months, when Earth arrives at opposite sides of the Sun in its orbit, giving a baseline distance of about two astronomical units between observations. The parallax itself is considered to be half of this maximum, about equivalent to the observational shift that would occur due to the different positions of Earth and the Sun, a baseline of one astronomical unit (AU). Stellar parallax is so difficult to detect that its existence was the subject of much debate in astronomy for hundreds of years. Thomas Henderson, Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve, and Friedrich Bessel made first successful parallax measurements in 1832-1838, for the stars alpha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Proper Motion
Proper motion is the astrometric measure of the observed changes in the apparent places of stars or other celestial objects in the sky, as seen from the center of mass of the Solar System, compared to the abstract background of the more distant stars. The components for proper motion in the equatorial coordinate system (of a given epoch, often J2000.0) are given in the direction of right ascension (''μ''α) and of declination (''μ''δ). Their combined value is computed as the ''total proper motion'' (''μ''). It has dimensions of angle per time, typically arcseconds per year or milliarcseconds per year. Knowledge of the proper motion, distance, and radial velocity allows calculations of an object's motion from our star system's frame of reference and its motion from the galactic frame of reference – that is motion in respect to the Sun, and by coordinate transformation, that in respect to the Milky Way. Introduction Over the course of centuries, stars appear t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Triple Star
A star system or stellar system is a small number of stars that orbit each other, bound by gravitational attraction. A large group of stars bound by gravitation is generally called a '' star cluster'' or '' galaxy'', although, broadly speaking, they are also star systems. Star systems are not to be confused with planetary systems, which include planets and similar bodies (such as comets). A star system of two stars is known as a '' binary star'', ''binary star system'' or ''physical double star''. If there are no tidal effects, no perturbation from other forces, and no transfer of mass from one star to the other, such a system is stable, and both stars will trace out an elliptical orbit around the barycenter of the system indefinitely. ''(See Two-body problem)''. Examples of binary systems are Sirius, Procyon and Cygnus X-1, the last of which probably consists of a star and a black hole. Multiple star systems A multiple star system consists of three or more stars that ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
.svg "Click for more on -> Jupiter")
