George Alcock

George Eric Deacon Alcock, MBE ( born August 28, 1912 in Peterborough, † 15 December 2000 ) was a British astronomer.

He is considered one of the most successful visual discoverers of novas and comets. At the beginning of his interest in astronomy was limited to meteors and meteor showers, as of 1953, however, he sought specifically for comets, and from 1955 also by Novae. His technique was, as far as they could go, to remember all star pattern to detect any deviation from it immediately.

So he could see two comets in 1959, the same, namely C/1959 Q1 and C/1959 Q2 five days later. For the British astronomy, the first discovery was something special, but it was the first discovery of a Briton since 1894 by William Frederick Denning. In the years 1963 ( C/1963 F1) and 1965 ( C/1965 S2) he discovered another comet, which were only provided with his name.

His first Nova, he discovered in 1967 in the constellation dolphin. A year later, the next nova in the constellation of the fox and another 1970 in the constellation sign. His last comet discovery succeeded him in 1983, C/1983 H1 ( IRAS - Araki - Alcock ). In 1991 he also discovered his last nova in the constellation Hercules.

With its limited resources, without use of modern electronics or photometry give him a pretty big success must be certified in his field after the fact. Experts are of the view that this will probably not be in this density with its methods accessible again.

His other areas of interest included the meteorology.

Honors

For his services Alcock was honored with the Order of the British Empire ( MBE). Also ( 3174 ) Alcock was named after him, the asteroid. In 1963 he was awarded the Jackson - Gwilt Medal of the Royal Astronomical Union.