Heinrich Louis d'Arrest

"d'Arrest" redirects here. For the lunar crater, see d'Arrest (crater).
Heinrich Louis d'Arrest

Heinrich Louis d'Arrest
Born 13 August 1822
Berlin
Died 14 June 1875(1875-06-14) (aged 52)
Copenhagen
Nationality German
Known for Neptune
Notable awards Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society
Lalande Prize (1844)

Heinrich Louis d'Arrest (13 August 1822 – 14 June 1875; German pronunciation: [daˈʁɛ] [1]) was a German astronomer, born in Berlin. His name is sometimes given as Heinrich Ludwig d'Arrest.

Asteroids discovered: 1
76 Freia 21 October 1862

Biography

While still a student at the University of Berlin, d'Arrest was party to Johann Gottfried Galle's search for Neptune. On 23 September 1846, he suggested that a recently drawn chart of the sky, in the region of Urbain Le Verrier's predicted location, could be compared with the current sky to seek the displacement characteristic of a planet, as opposed to a stationary star. Neptune was discovered that very night.

D'Arrest's later work at the Leipzig Observatory led him, in 1851, to the discovery of the comet named for him (formally designated 6P/d'Arrest). He also studied asteroids, discovering 76 Freia, and nebulae.

In 1864 D'Arrest made an unsuccessful search for Martian satellites, and posited an upper limit of 70 minutes of arc as the distance from Mars within which a moon should be sought.[2]

He won the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1875.

In 1857, he married Auguste Emilie Möbius, daughter of his then supervisor, August Ferdinand Möbius.[3] He died in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The crater D'Arrest on the Moon is named after him, as well as a crater on the Martian satellite Phobos and the asteroid 9133 d'Arrest.

References

  1. Müller, August, Allgemeines Wörterbuch der Aussprache ausländischer Eigennamen (7th ed., 1903), p. 34.
  2. Lord Lindsay, "Address," Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 39:4 (Feb. 14, 1879), p. 311.
  3. Hockey, Thomas (2009). The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer Publishing. ISBN 978-0-387-31022-0. Retrieved August 22, 2012.

External links

Obituaries

Further reading

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