Robert Evans (astronomer)
Robert Evans ( born 1937 in Sydney) is an Australian clergyman of the Uniting Church in Australia and an amateur astronomer. He discovered since 1981 42 supernovae (2008 ), and thus holds the record for visual observations without the aid of computers.
Education and work
Evans studied philosophy and history at the University of Sydney. Coming from a religious family, he was trained as a pastor and was ordained in 1967. He went into retirement in 1998. He also wrote several books on religious subjects, his special interest is the history of religious movements in the 19th century.
Astronomy
Already since 1955 Evans sought from the sky, but his former telescopes were too small to make serious discoveries, also he lacked appropriate star maps for the southern hemisphere. From 1968, he worked with a 10 -inch Newtonian telescope. He had almost given up hope of discovery in the 70 years to 1980, by visual observation of a supernova in the galaxy Messier 100 (NGC 4321 ) was discovered. He took his observations on again and made 1980 his first unofficial discovery, a supernova in Fornax A ( NGC 1316 ), which was made public by other astronomers before Evans could confirm its independent sighting. Beginning of 1981 he took his first official supernova in NGC 1532. Overall, he made nine discoveries with his 10 - inch telescope, before moving first to a 16 - inch telescope, and later to a more portable 12-inch telescope. Two of his discoveries from the years 1983 and 1984 proved to be the first representative of the newly discovered supernova type 1b, and another supernova discovered by him founded 1c type. Between 1995 and 1997 he was also able to use a 40-inch telescope at Siding Spring Observatory near Coonabarabran, where he made three more visual discoveries and four photographs.
Between 1981 and 1996 he took an average of two supernovae per year. It can scan 50 galaxies scattered in an hour or up to 120 in galaxy clusters like Virgo. Only after computers are used increasingly since the 1990s, according to the automated supernovae search, its speed is exceeded. Oliver Sacks describes Evans ' extraordinary talent to memorize 1500 galaxies and to be able to notice subtle changes in a section of his book An Anthropologist on Mars. Even Bill Bryson Robert Evans devoted a chapter in his book A Short History of Nearly Everything.
Evans has won several awards for his work, among other things, he was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia and the Amateur Achievement Award of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. From 1985 to 2005 he served on the board of the American Association of Variable Star Observers. The asteroid ( 3032 ) Evans was named after him.
He lives with his wife in Hazelbrook in New South Wales.
Works
- An Evangelical World -View Philosophy. (1993)
- An Outline History of Evangelical Revivals in the Pacific Islands and Papua New Guinea. ( Compiled and edited 1996)
- Evangelical Revivals in New Zealand. With Roy McKenzie. (1999)
- Early Evangelical Revivals in Australia. (2000)
- Evangelism and Revivals in Australia, 1880 to 1914. ( First Volume, 2005)
- Fire From Heaven: A Description and Analysis of the revival of the ' Burned -Over District " of upstate New York, 1800-1840, and Spiritual Deceptions. (2005)
- Emilia Baeyertz - Evangelist: Her Career in Australia and Great Britain. (2007)