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Edmund Halley

Today, we recognize Edmund Halley for Halley?s comet, which he wasn't the discoverer of, but he was the first to realize it was the same comet that came into view every 75 years or so. He lived an interesting life. He was not only an astronomer, but also a geophysicist, a mathematician, a physicist, and a meteorologist.

Edmund Halley's Early Life

Edmund Halley was born in Haggerston, Shoreditch, London, England late in the year 1656. His father was a rich property owner. He was homeschooled for several years, before becoming a student at St Paul?s School.

He married in 1682, and his father was brutally killed in 1684. Halley and his wife, Mary, had three children.

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Astronomy Facts:

MAP (Microwave Anisotropy Probe) is a NASA satellite that will be launched in April, 2001, and will orbit for 27 months. MAP was designed to help answer the cosmological questions about the early universe: "What are the values of the cosmological parameters of the Big Bang theory?", "When did the first structures of galaxies form?", and "How did structures of galaxies form in the universe?". MAP will measure minute temperature fluctuations (anisotropy) in the cosmic microwave background radiation (the radiant heat left over from the Big Bang) over the entire sky (these were originally detected by the COBE satellite). MAP will orbit at the unstable Sun-Earth Lagrange point L2; the Sun, Earth, and MAP will always be in a straight line.

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Edmund Halley's Training and Early Work

Edmund attended the St Paul?s School, especially excelling in astronomy. He entered the Queens College at the age of 17, already an accomplished astronomer. While an undergraduate he was already publishing his own papers on sunspots and the solar system. Like many of his class, he left college without a degree.

He started working with the Royal Astronomer, John Flamsteed, and by 1676 he was making significant discoveries of his own.

Edmund Halley's Astronomical Discoveries

When his mentor, Flamsteed, was off charting the stars of the northern sky, Halley went to do the same in the southern hemisphere. Halley was elected to the Royal Society in 1678, and he was given his degree by the mandate of Charles II in 1679. He spent a lot of time studying Kepler?s laws of planetary motion, and deduced that the planets moved in an ellipse.

Flamsteed later became a vocal opponent of Halley, and he prevented Halley from being appointed to a professorship at Oxford. In 1704, Halley was elevated in position at Oxford as the Savilian Professor of Geometry, much to Flamsteed?s dismay.

In 1710, Halley discovered apparent motion of several stars that were thought to be ?fixed.? In 1712, he published Flamsteed?s star catalogs and observations, even though Flamsteed strenuously opposed him. Then in 1715, Halley wrote and published a summarization of six variable stars known at that time, and in 1716, another about six known nebulae. Halley is responsible for discovering two deepsky objects: the globular clusters Omega Centauri (NGC 5139) and the Hercules Cluster (M13).

When Flamsteed died, Halley succeeded him as Astronomer Royal in 1720. Flamsteed?s wife was so angry at his appointment that she got rid of all her husband?s astronomical instruments so Edmund Halley could not ever have access to them.

Halley's Comet

In 1705, Halley wrote and published his Astronomiae Cometiae Synopsis, including the observation he made about the comet he had studied in 1682. He analyzed the orbit, and thought it was close enough to the comets observed in 1531 and 1607 to determine that it was the same comet. He predicted its expected return in 1758, although he did not live to see it, dying in 1742. The comet was first seen again on Christmas Day, 1758, and reached its perihelion by mid-March, 1759.

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Astronomer of the day:

Edward Emerson Barnard (1857-1923) was an American astronomer who discovered Barnard's star (the star system second-closest to us) in 1916, 16 comets, and Amalthea, a moon of Jupiter, in 1892.