Robert Burnham, Jr.

Robert Burnham, Jr. ( born June 16, 1931 in Chicago, Illinois, † March 20, 1993 in San Diego, California ) was an American astronomer. He became famous for his work Burnham 's Celestial Handbook ( Burnham's manual of the sky).

Life

Burnham's ancestors came from Germany; the original family name was Bernheim.

Burnham's family moved in 1940 from Chicago to Prescott, Arizona, where he graduated from high school in 1949. This ended his school education.

He was considered a shy, introverted personality, had few friends and was never married. He devoted most of his time to amateur astronomy, where he observed the heavens with a homemade telescope.

In 1957 he discovered a comet and the public became known. This led in 1958 to a position at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, where he participated in a program to study the proper motion of stars. Burnham's task was to examine photographic images by blink comparator. During his twenty-one years continuous activity at the observatory he and his colleagues discovered, including Norman G. Thomas, five other comets ( including 56P/Slaughter-Burnham ) and the asteroid ( 3397 ) Leyla.

In his free time Burnham created an extensive astronomical data collection, which was published in 1978 as " Celestial Handbook".

After completion of the investigation program in December 1979, he could not continue to be employed as an astronomer at the observatory. An activity offered there as a janitor he refused.

The loss of his position at the observatory meant for Burnham a personal, professional and financial blow from which he never recovered his life. Although his manual sold well increasingly, his living conditions deteriorated. He withdrew more and suffered from depression.

Although he was a successful author, Burnham spent his last years in impoverished San Diego, where he sold himself painted cat pictures in a park.

He died alone at the age of 61 years. His family only found out two years later by his death.

In his memory, the asteroid ( 3467 ) Bernheim was named. Since even an asteroid ( 834 ) Burnhamia (named after the astronomer Sherburne Wesley Burnham, with whom he was not related) existed, the name follows the original family name.

Work

While working at the Lowell Observatory Burnham amassed extensive astronomical data and published this since 1966, self-published. In 1978, a revised version in three volumes from the publisher Dover.

The work on the manual and its publication were never officially supported by Lowell Observatory.

The Celestial Handbook is a 2,138 -page work will be cataloged in the deep-sky objects such as stars, double stars, variable, nebulae, star clusters and galaxies, and partly described in detail. It contains several hundred photographic images, tables and charts. The manual counts due to its information content of the classics of astronomical literature. Since the objects described can also be observed with small and medium-sized telescopes, it is used by many amateur astronomers. It is to this day although only in English.

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