Alexander Wilson (astronomer)

Alexander Wilson (* 1714 in St Andrews, † October 18, 1786 in Glasgow ) was a Scottish astronomer and mathematician.

Wilson was initially pharmacist. From 1760 he was professor of astronomy at the University of Glasgow.

He undertook in 1748 and 1749 with Thomas Melvill ( 1726-1753 ), the first known attempts to determine the temperature higher air layers by attaching a thermometer to dragons and these could ascend. Later, in the last years of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century, the weather dragon was next to the weather balloon the most important tool to carry meteorological instruments in the free atmosphere.

Wilson discovered in 1769 that sunspots appear recessed into the surface of the sun, when they are located near the solar limb ( Wilson effect). He concluded that sunspots are parts of the sun and not asteroids or similar objects that are in front of the sun.

Wilson was one of the founding members of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. The lunar crater Wilson is named after him as well as the Scottish physicist Charles Thomson Rees Wilson and the American astronomer Ralph Elmer Wilson.