William Henry Pickering

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William Henry Pickering

William Henry Pickering (February 15, 1858 – January 17, 1938) was an American

United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
astronomer

Astronomer

An astronomer is a scientist who studies Celestial body such as planets, stars, and Galaxy.Historically, astronomy was more concerned with the classification and description of phenomena in the sky, while astrophysics attempted to explain these phenomena and the differences between them using physical laws....
, brother of Edward Charles Pickering

Edward Charles Pickering

Edward Charles Pickering was an United States astronomer and physicist, brother of William Henry Pickering.Along with Hermann Carl Vogel, Pickering discovered the first spectroscopic binary stars....
.

iscovered Saturn's ninth moon

Natural satellite

A natural satellite or moon is a celestial body that orbits a planet or smaller body, which is called the primary. Technically, the term natural satellite could refer to a planet orbiting a star, or a dwarf galaxy orbiting a major galaxy, but it is normally synonymous with moon and used to identify non-artificial satellites...
Phoebe

Phoebe (moon)

'Phoebe' is an irregular satellite natural satellite of Saturn . It was discovered by William Henry Pickering on March 17, 1899 from photographic plates that had been taken starting on August 16, 1898 at Arequipa, Peru by DeLisle Stewart....
in 1899 from plates taken in 1898. He also believed he had discovered a tenth moon in 1905 from plates taken in 1904, which he called "Themis". Unfortunately "Themis" does not exist.

Following George Darwin

George Darwin

Sir George Howard Darwin, Fellow of the Royal Society was an England astronomer and mathematician, the second son and fifth child of Charles Darwin and Emma Darwin....
, he speculated in 1907 that the moon was once a part of the earth and that it broke away where now the Pacific Ocean

Pacific Ocean

The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. Its name is derived from the Latin name Mare Pacificum, "peaceful sea", bestowed upon it by the Portugal explorer Ferdinand Magellan....
lies.

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Encyclopedia

William Henry Pickering (February 15, 1858 – January 17, 1938) was an American

United States

Astronomer

Edward Charles Pickering

Work

He discovered Saturn's ninth moon

Natural satellite

Phoebe (moon)

George Darwin

Pacific Ocean

Continental drift

Continental drift is the movement of the Earth's continents relative to each other. The hypothesis that continents 'drift' was first put forward by Abraham Ortelius in 1596 and was fully developed by Alfred Wegener in 1912....
(even before Alfred Wegener

Alfred Wegener

Alfred Lothar Wegener was a Germany scientist, geologist, and meteorologist.He is most notable for his theory of continental drift , proposed in 1915, which hypothesized that the continents were slowly drifting around the Earth....
) and speculated that America

Americas

The Americas are the region of the Western hemisphere that consists of the continents of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions....
, Asia

Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent. It covers 8.6% of the Earth's total surface area and, with over 4 billion people, it contains more than 60% of the world's current human population....
, Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km? including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area....
, and Europe

Europe

Europe is, conventionally, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural , the Caspian Sea, and by the Caucasus Mountains to the southeast....
once formed a single continent, which broke up because of the separation of the moon.

In 1908 he made a statement regarding the possibility of airplanes that had not yet been invented, saying that "a popular fantasy is to suppose that flying machines could be used to drop dynamite on the enemy in time of war".

He led solar eclipse

Solar eclipse

A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between the Sun and the Earth so that the Sun is wholly or partially obscured. This can only happen during a new moon, when the Sun and Moon are in conjunction as seen from the Earth....
expeditions and studied crater

Impact crater

In the broadest sense, the term impact crater can be applied to any depression, natural or manmade, resulting from the high velocity impact of a projectile with larger body....
s on the Moon

Moon

The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite and the List of natural satellites by diameter satellite in the Solar System. The average centre-to-centre distance from the Earth to the Moon is km, about thirty times the diameter of the Earth....
, and hypothesized that changes in the appearance of the crater Eratosthenes

Eratosthenes (crater)

Eratosthenes is a relatively deep Moon impact crater that lies on the boundary between the Mare Imbrium and Sinus Aestuum Lunar mare regions. It forms the western terminus of the Montes Apenninus mountain range....
were due to "lunar insects". He claimed to have found vegetation

Vegetation

refers to the flora system of a specific region....
on the moon.

In 1919, he predicted the existence and position of a Planet X

Planet X

Following the discovery of the planet Neptune in 1846, there was considerable speculation that another planet might exist beyond its orbit. The search began in the mid-19th century but culminated at the start of the 20th with Percival Lowell's quest for Planet X....
based on anomalies in the positions of Uranus and Neptune but a search of Mount Wilson Observatory

Mount Wilson Observatory

The Mount Wilson Observatory is an astronomical observatory in Los Angeles County, California. The MWO is located on Mount Wilson , a 5,715 foot peak in the San Gabriel Mountains near Pasadena, California, northeast of Los Angeles....
photographs failed to find the predicted planet. Pluto was later discovered at Flagstaff by Clyde Tombaugh

Clyde Tombaugh

Clyde William Tombaugh was an United States astronomer.Tombaugh is best known for discovering the dwarf planet Pluto in 1930, but also discovered many asteroids, and called for serious scientific research of unidentified flying objects....
in 1930, but in any case it is now known that Pluto's mass is far too small to have appreciable gravitational effects on Uranus or Neptune, and the anomalies are accounted for when today's much more accurate values of planetary masses are used in calculating orbits. When the planet was named, he interpreted its symbol as a monogram referring to himself and Lowell

Percival Lowell

Percival Lawrence Lowell was a businessman, author, mathematician, and astronomer who fueled speculation that there were Martian canal on Mars , founded the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, Arizona, and formed the beginning of the effort that led to the discovery of Pluto 14 years after his death....
by the phrase "Pickering-Lowell".

Pickering constructed and established several observatories

Observatory

An observatory is a location used for observing terrestrial and/or celestial events. Astronomy, climatology/meteorology, geology, oceanography and volcanology are examples of disciplines for which observatories have been constructed....
or astronomical observation stations, notably including Percival Lowell

Percival Lowell

Percival Lawrence Lowell was a businessman, author, mathematician, and astronomer who fueled speculation that there were Martian canal on Mars , founded the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, Arizona, and formed the beginning of the effort that led to the discovery of Pluto 14 years after his death....
's Flagstaff Observatory. He spent much of the later part of his life at his private observatory in Jamaica

Jamaica

Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length and as much as in width situated in the Caribbean Sea. It is about south of Cuba, and west of the island of Hispaniola, on which Haiti and the Dominican Republic are situated....
. He produced a photographic atlas of the Moon: The Moon : A Summary of the Existing Knowledge of our Satellite — New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1903.

The craters Pickering

Pickering (lunar crater)

Pickering is a small moon impact crater located to the northeast of the worn walled plain Hipparchus in the central region of the Moon. It lies to the northeast of the crater Horrocks , which lies within Hipparchus....
on the Moon

Moon

The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite and the List of natural satellites by diameter satellite in the Solar System. The average centre-to-centre distance from the Earth to the Moon is km, about thirty times the diameter of the Earth....
and Pickering on Mars are jointly named after him and his brother Edward Charles Pickering

Edward Charles Pickering

External links

Obituaries

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