Arthur Auwers

Arthur Julius Georg Friedrich von Auwers ( born September 12, 1838 in Göttingen, † January 24, 1915 in Great light field ) was a German astronomer. He created in 1879 the first fundamental catalog, a comprehensive, totally oriented star catalog.

Life and work

Auwers was born in Göttingen, the son of the university Captain Gottfried Daniel Auwers ( 1796-1847 ). His parents died very early, so he grew up with a guardian. He attended elementary school and high school in Göttingen, and later the High School of Schulpforta in Thuringia. During his school years he became interested in astronomy and celestial observations leads through. In 1854, he discovered a misty object that was not listed in William Herschel's catalog.

Then Auwers studied astronomy at the University of Göttingen. He determined the positions of asteroids and comets whose orbits calculated and observed variable stars. He joined the University of Königsberg in 1859 and assistant to the Bessel student Edward Luther at the local observatory. With Bessels Heliometer he determined the proper motions of stars. In 1862 he graduated successfully with a thesis on the movement of the double star Procyon. The determined by Auwers data for Procyon and Sirius were included in the Nautical Almanac and other star catalogs.

In 1862 he married the daughter of a teacher from Schulpforta, with her he later had three sons. The couple moved to Gotha, where he took up the post of a volunteer at the observatory Gotha.

Auwers in 1866 became a full member of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences as the astronomer. From 1882 he was a corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. In the same year he was elected member of the Learned Academy Leopoldina.

In his position determinations Auwers had always found inaccuracies and errors in the then existing star catalogs. A complete revision he saw as an urgent need. In the next few years he cataloged 170,000 stars, and he devoted himself to the creation of a fundamental catalog, in which he summarized data from the years 1753 to 1900. The work published in 1879 contained 539 stars in the northern sky ( δ ° to -10 ° ) and formed the basis for the study of the structure of our galaxy.

In addition, Auwers was instrumental in the preparation and implementation German expeditions that should be observed in Luxor in 1874 and 1882 in Punta Arenas Venus passages to determine the solar parallax. He summarized the results in six volumes. Because of measurement errors, however, the exact value of the parallax could not be determined. In 1889 he succeeded from the Cape of Good Hope, together with the British astronomer David Gill, a more accurate determination of the solar parallax from the position of the provisions of the asteroid Victoria.

For his achievements Auwers been recipient of numerous awards and honors. He received, among other things, the gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) and the Order Pour le Mérite. He was member of the RAS and the Academies of Sciences ( or similar institutions ) of Paris, Vienna, St. Petersburg and Washington DC. Occasion of his 50th anniversary promotion be sovereign elevated him in 1912 in the hereditary nobility. In his memory, an impact crater on the Moon was named later.

In personal dealings Auwers was rather difficult. He was silent and closed.

Auwers is buried in the cemetery I of Jerusalem and a new church in Berlin. The tomb is located in the Dept. 3/1, G3.

The chemist Karl Friedrich von Auwers was his son; the physicist Otto von Auwers his grandson.

Tributes and remembrance

1938 was attached to his 100th birthday a memorial plaque on his Göttingen Göttingen youth house in the street riding stables 1.

Publications (selection)

• Reduction of the fundamental stars in the passages instrument of the observatory at Palermo in the Younger 1803-1805. Leipzig 1866.
• Studies of variable proper motions. Leipzig 1868.
• The Venus passages 1874 and 1882. Account of the German observations. Berlin from 1887 to 1898.