Heinrich Kreutz

Heinrich Carl Friedrich Kreutz ( born September 28, 1854 in Siegen, † July 3, 1907 in Kiel ) was a German astronomer. According to him the Kreutz group was named, a group of comets that pass very close to the sun.

Life

After leaving school in Siegen Kreutz studied at the University of Bonn astronomy among professors Adalbert Krüger and Eduard Schönfeld. In 1880 he received his PhD and then went for several months to Vienna, where he worked under Theodor Oppolzer.

In 1882 he took a job as a computer at the Astronomical Institute of computational Berlin. In 1883 he moved to the University of Kiel; at the local observatory his former Professor Kruger was meanwhile become director. Kreutz began working again as host and in 1889 as an observer at the observatory. In 1891 he was appointed professor of astronomy at the University of Kiel. During this time he married Kruger daughter.

1896 died Kruger and Kreutz took over his job as editor of the Astronomische Nachrichten, one of his time leading journals for astronomy. Since 1891 he belonged to the Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina in as a member.

Kreutz studied the orbits of comets, whose Periheldurchgänge took place in large perihelion, and found that these fragments must be of a larger comet. Some of the Kreutz comets are among the brightest comets ever observed how the comet Ikeya - Seki in 1965 published.