Philibert Jacques Melotte

Philibert Jacques Melotte (29 January 1880 – 30 March 1961) was a British astronomer whose parents emigrated from Belgium.[2]

Asteroids discovered: 1 [1]
676 Melitta16 January 1909MPC

In 1908 he discovered a moon of Jupiter, today known as Pasiphaë. It was simply designated "Jupiter VIII" and was not given its present name until 1975. The outer main-belt asteroid 676 Melitta, the only asteroid he discovered,[1] is named after the Attic form of the Greek Melissa, the bee, but its resemblance to the discoverer's name is not fortuitous.[3]

The conspicuous star cluster in the Coma Berenices constellation is commonly designated Mel 111 since it appeared in Melotte's 1915 catalogue of star clusters,[4] but not in Charles Messier's famous catalogue of deep sky objects or in the New General Catalogue since it was not proved to be a true cluster until 1938 by the astronomer R J Trumpler.[5]

Melotte was awarded the Jackson-Gwilt Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1909. A collection of his papers is held at Cambridge University Library.

See also

References
  1. "Minor Planet Discoverers (by number)". Minor Planet Center. 23 May 2016. Retrieved 22 June 2016.
  2. Hunter, A. (March 1962). "Obituary Notices: Philibert Jacques Melotte" (PDF). Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society. 3: 48. Bibcode:1962QJRAS...3...48. Retrieved 22 June 2016.
  3. Schmadel, Lutz D. (2007). "(676) Melitta". Dictionary of Minor Planet Names – (676) Melitta. Springer Berlin Heidelberg. p. 66. doi:10.1007/978-3-540-29925-7_677. ISBN 978-3-540-00238-3.
  4. Melotte, P. J. "A Catalogue of Star Clusters shown on Franklin-Adams Chart Plates", MmRAS, 1915
  5. The Coma Berenices star cluster (Melotte 111)


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.