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Friedrich Wilhelm August Argelander

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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FRIEDRICH WILHELM AUGUST ARGELANDER (1799-1875), German astronomer, 'was born at Memel on the 22nd of March 1799. He studied at the university of Konigsberg, and was attracted to astronomy by F. W. Bessel, whose assistant he became (October 1, 1820). His treatise on the path of the great comet of 1811 appeared in 1822; he was, in 1823, entrusted with the direction of the observatory at Abo; and he exchanged it for a similar charge at Helsingfors in 1832. His admirable investigation of the sun's motion in space was published in 1837; and in the same year he was appointed professor of astronomy in the university of Bonn, where he died on the 17th of February 1875. He also published Observationes Astrono- micae Aboae Factae (3 vols., 1830-1832); DLX Stellarum Fixarum Positiones Mediae (1835); and the first seven volumes of Astronomische Beobachtungen auf der Sternwarte zu Bonn (1846-1869), containing his observations of northern and southern star-zones, and his great Durchmusterung (vols. iii.-v., 18 591862) of 324,198 stars, from the north pole to - 2° Dec. The corresponding atlas was issued in 1863. His observations (begun in 1838) and discussions of variable stars were embodied in vol. vii. of the same series.

See E. SchOnfeld in Vierteljahrsschrift der Astronomischen Gesellschaft, x. pp. 150-178.