Hermann Goldschmidt
Hermann Mayer Salomon Goldschmidt ( born June 17, 1802 in Frankfurt am Main, † April 26, 1866 in Fontainebleau ) was a German - French astronomer and painter.
Life
Goldschmidt was the son of a Jewish merchant in Frankfurt. He worked in his father's company, but then turned to painting, which he studied in Paris and practiced.
In 1847 he moved his field of activity to astronomy and discovered at the Paris Observatory 1852-1861 fourteen asteroids of about 70 to 280 km Size. He has served as the " record holder " the astronomer John Russell Hind from (10 asteroids from 1847 to 1854 ). According to him, it brought Karl Theodor Robert Luther on 24 specimens ( 1852-1890 ), the American CHF Peters on 48 (1861-1889) and the Austrian Johann Palisa to 123 asteroids ( 1874-1923 ).
Perhaps the most interesting of Goldschmidt's asteroid is also its smallest: (44 ) Nysa of 1857 he is for his size of 70 km strikingly bright ( albedo 0.55) and has a yellowish color, which are ascribed to the mineral enstatite. . Due to the disk-like rotating in 6 ½ hours form the celestial body formed a strange light curve, as it had been until then only found on a small planet.
In April 1861 Hermann Goldschmidt published the discovery of a ninth moon of Saturn, from which he gave a path between Titan and Hyperion, and named it Chiron. But the discovery was never confirmed by another astronomer, which is why the name was later assigned the unusual asteroid - comet ( 2060 ) Chiron. The "official" 9th moon called Phoebe discovered in 1898 William Henry Pickering photographically. He is Saturn's outermost moon, and was photographed in June 2004 by the space probe Cassini -Huygens.
For his achievements Hermann Goldschmidt in 1861 was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society. Furthermore, the asteroid ( 1614) Goldschmidt and the moon crater Goldschmidt were named after him. At the Paris commemorative coin of 1868, which was coined to mark the centenary of asteroids, he is shown alongside three other multiple explorers.