William Huggins
Sir William Huggins ( born February 7, 1824 in London, England; † May 12, 1910 ) was a British astronomer and physicist. He was one of the first who applied the spectral analysis on celestial bodies.
Life and work
He built a private observatory in 1856 at London and built for his 20cm lens telescope, a spectroscope. As Kirchhoff and Bunsen in 1859 discovered that the Fraunhofer lines caused by chemical elements in the solar spectrum, Huggins began to systematically observe together with his wife Margaret Lindsay Huggins, the color spectra of stars and nebulae also. He was given his thorough investigation of emission and absorption lines - as the same research-based in Rome Angelo Secchi - a pioneer in the spectral analysis.
In his diary, Huggins wrote about his motivation for entering this new territory when he learned of Kirchhoff's great discovery: "This news filled me with great joy, as they might feel a thirsty wanderer who finds a fountain in the desert now was finally the. field of activity found after I had sought so long in vain: the expansion of the new ideas of the sun to other objects in the sky. "
Huggins was the first astronomer who was able to between nebulae and galaxies (?) By observing the spectral lines differ. For this purpose he examined the spectra of a number of chemical elements, and published his results with images of the spectra ( a novelty at that time ) in the Philosophical Transactions. In 1863 he showed that the same chemical elements as on Earth are visible in the spectra of stars. Soon after, he realized in some planetary nebulae excited emission lines. In 1866 he was able to verify the observation of a nova in the constellation crown (T Coronae Borealis ) that their extreme, expanding envelope consists of hydrogen.
Finally, Huggins also explored the movement of stars by spectral analysis. In the spectrum of Sirius, he found a red shift and pointed them properly as the Doppler effect. He concluded that it was necessary to remove the star from us (positive radial velocity ).
Honors
1865 Huggins was elected as a member ( "Fellow" ) to the Royal Society, in 1866, the Royal Medal in 1880, the Rumford Medal and the Copley Medal in 1898 awarded him. From 1900 to 1905 he was president of the Royal Society, 1885 Huggins was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society.
In 1897 he was raised to the peerage, and in 1904 awarded the Bruce Medal. Since 1872 he was a corresponding member of the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome.
According to the astronomers of the lunar crater Huggins, of Huggins and Mars crater the asteroid ( 2635 ) Huggins are named.