List of astronomers facts for kids

This page lists some amazing people who have studied the stars, planets, and everything else in space! These astronomers and astrophysicists have made huge discoveries. They have won big awards, invented new tools, or led important space projects. Their work helps us understand the vast universe we live in.

Famous Astronomers and Their Discoveries

A

• Marc Aaronson (United States, 1950–1987)
  • Marc Aaronson studied how fast the universe is expanding. He used a special method called the Tully-Fisher relation. He also looked at carbon-rich stars and how they move in small galaxies. Marc was one of the first to try and see dark matter using infrared cameras. He found mysterious halos around galaxies that might be dark matter.

• John Couch Adams (United Kingdom, 1819–1892)
  • John Couch Adams is famous for predicting where the planet Neptune would be. He used only math to figure this out! He made his calculations because the orbit of Uranus didn't quite match what scientists expected based on the laws of Kepler and Newton.

• Albategnius (Syria, circa 858–929)
  • Al-Battani observed the Sun closely. He helped us understand why solar eclipses happen. He also accurately calculated the Earth's tilt. This is the angle between the Earth's equator and its path around the Sun.

• Viktor Amazaspovich Ambartsumian (Armenia, 1912–1996)
  • Viktor Ambartsumian was one of the most important astronomers of the 20th century. Many consider him the founder of theoretical astrophysics in the Soviet Union. He helped us understand how stars form and evolve.

• Aristarchus of Samos (Greece, circa 310 BC – circa 230 BC)
  • Aristarchus was the first person we know of to suggest that the Sun is at the center of our universe. This idea is called heliocentrism. He believed the Earth revolved around the Sun once a year. He also thought it spun on its own axis once a day.

• Svante Arrhenius (Sweden, 1859–1927)
  • Svante Arrhenius was the first to use chemistry to estimate how much carbon dioxide in the air affects Earth's temperature. His work was an early step in understanding climate change.

• Aryabhata (India, 476–550)
  • Aryabhata correctly stated that the Earth spins on its axis every day. He explained that the stars seem to move because of Earth's rotation. He also gave scientific explanations for solar and lunar eclipses. Aryabhata calculated how long it takes for the Earth to spin once compared to the stars.

B

• Edward Emerson Barnard (United States, 1857–1923)
  • Edward Barnard is best known for discovering Barnard's Star in 1916. This star moves very quickly across our sky. It was named in his honor.

• Wilhelm Beer (Germany, 1797–1850)
  • Wilhelm Beer worked with Johann Heinrich Mädler. Together, they created the first accurate maps of the Moon and Mars.

• Jocelyn Bell Burnell (United Kingdom, 1943–)
  • Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered the first radio pulsars in 1967. These are super-dense, spinning neutron stars that send out radio waves. It was a huge discovery!

• Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel (Germany, 1784–1846)
  • Friedrich Bessel was the first person to successfully measure the distance to a star other than our Sun. This was a major breakthrough in understanding the scale of the universe.

• Ludwig Biermann (Germany, 1907–1986)
  • Ludwig Biermann discovered the Biermann battery. This process can create a weak magnetic field from nothing. He also predicted the existence of the solar wind. He called it "solar corpuscular radiation" in 1947.

• Bart Bok (Netherlands, 1906–1983)
  • Bart Bok is famous for discovering Bok globules. These are small, dark, dense clouds of gas and dust in space. They can be seen as dark shapes against brighter backgrounds. New stars can form inside these clouds.

• Charles Thomas Bolton (United States/Canada, 1943–2021)
  • Charles Bolton was one of the first scientists to find strong evidence that stellar-mass black holes exist. These are black holes formed from collapsed stars.

• James Bradley (United Kingdom, 1693–1762)
  • James Bradley made two very important discoveries in astronomy. He found the aberration of light (1725–1728). This is how light from stars seems to shift because of Earth's motion. He also discovered the nutation of the Earth's axis (1728–1748). This is a small wobble in Earth's tilt.

• Tycho Brahe (Denmark, 1546–1601)
  • Tycho Brahe was the first to discover a supernova. He mistakenly thought it was a new star being created. In reality, it was a dying star. This discovery was a big reason why people started to believe the universe was not static and unchanging.

• Theodor Brorsen (Denmark, 1819–1895)
  • Theodor Brorsen is best known for discovering five comets. This includes the lost periodic comet, 5D/Brorsen.

• Michael (Mike) E. Brown (United States, 1965–)
  • Michael Brown helped discover several dwarf planets beyond Pluto. These include Quaoar (2002), Makemake (2005), and Eris (2006). His discoveries led to a big discussion about what makes a planet a planet.

C

• Alastair G. W. Cameron (Canada, 1925–2005)
  • Alastair Cameron was a founder of nuclear astrophysics. This field studies how elements are made in stars. He also suggested that the Moon was formed when a Mars-sized object crashed into the early Earth. He was also one of the first to use computers in astrophysics.

• Annie Jump Cannon (United States, 1863–1941)
  • Annie Jump Cannon was a pioneering astronomer. She developed a system for classifying stars based on their temperature and spectral characteristics. Her work was crucial for understanding how stars evolve.

• Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (India/United States, 1910–1995)
  • Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar won the 1983 Nobel Prize for Physics. He shared it with William A. Fowler. They were recognized for their studies on how stars are structured and how they change over time.

• James Christy (United States, 1938–)
  • James Christy discovered Charon. This is the largest moon of Pluto.

• Nicolaus Copernicus (Prussia/Poland, 1473–1543)
  • Copernicus developed the heliocentric model of the solar system. This model correctly placed the Sun at the center, with the planets orbiting around it. Before him, most people thought Earth was the center.

• Heather Couper (United Kingdom, 1949–2020)
  • Heather Couper was a well-known British astronomer and science popularizer. In 1984, she became the first woman and second-youngest person to be President of the British Astronomical Association.

D

• Leonardo da Vinci (Italy, 1452–1519)
  • While primarily known as an artist and inventor, Leonardo da Vinci also made observations about the Moon. He correctly figured out that the faint glow on the unlit part of the Moon was due to sunlight reflecting off Earth.

E

• Arthur Eddington (United Kingdom, 1882–1944)
  • Around 1920, Arthur Eddington predicted how nuclear fusion works inside stars. The Eddington limit, which is the natural brightness limit for stars, is named after him.

• Albert Einstein (Germany, 1879–1955)
  • Albert Einstein was a brilliant physicist. His theories of relativity changed how we understand gravity, space, and time. These ideas are very important for modern astronomy and astrophysics.

• Eratosthenes (Alexandria, 276 BC – 194 BC)
  • Eratosthenes was an ancient Greek scholar. He is famous for accurately calculating the circumference of the Earth using simple geometry and observations of shadows.

F

• William Alfred Fowler (United States, 1911–1995)
  • William Alfred Fowler won the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physics with Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. He is known for his research on nuclear reactions inside stars. His work helped explain how elements are created in the universe.

• Joseph von Fraunhofer (Germany, 1787–1826)
  • Joseph von Fraunhofer designed the Heliometer. This instrument was used to successfully measure the distance to a star (other than the Sun) for the very first time.

G

• Galileo Galilei (Italy, 1564–1642)
  • Galileo Galilei made many important discoveries using his telescope. He observed the phases of Venus, the moons of Jupiter, and the mountains on the Moon. His observations strongly supported the idea that the Earth orbits the Sun.

• Gan De (China, fl. 4th century BC)
  • Gan De, along with Shi Shen, created China's first star catalogue. This was a detailed list of stars.

• Johann Gottfried Galle (Germany, 1812–1910)
  • Johann Gottfried Galle was the first person to actually see the planet Neptune. He knew what he was looking at because Urbain Le Verrier had predicted its exact location.

• Andrea M. Ghez (United States, 1965–)
  • Andrea Ghez is a modern astronomer who studies the center of our galaxy. She has done important work on the supermassive black hole there.

• Riccardo Giacconi (Italy, 1931–2018)
  • Riccardo Giacconi was a pioneer in X-ray astronomy. He helped develop X-ray telescopes and discovered the first X-ray sources outside our solar system.

• Karl Glazebrook (United Kingdom, 1965–)
  • Karl Glazebrook helped determine that the average color of the entire universe is a shade of beige, which has been humorously named "Cosmic Latte".

• Hermann Goldschmidt (Germany, 1802–1866)
  • In 1820, Hermann Goldschmidt discovered shadow bands during total solar eclipses. These are faint, wavy lines of light and dark that can be seen just before and after totality.

H

• Karl Ludwig Harding (Germany, 1765–1834)
  • Karl Ludwig Harding was part of the "celestial police" group. This group made calculations that led to the discovery of many dwarf planets between Mars and Jupiter.

• Stephen Hawking (United Kingdom, 1942–2018)
  • Stephen Hawking was a famous theoretical physicist. He made huge contributions to our understanding of black holes and the origins of the universe.

• William Herschel (United Kingdom/Germany, 1738–1822)
  • William Herschel discovered Uranus in 1781. This was the first planet discovered with a telescope. He also studied double stars and nebulae.

• Ejnar Hertzsprung (Denmark, 1873–1967)
  • Ejnar Hertzsprung developed a way to classify stars. He divided them by their type, stage of life, and brightness. This system is known as the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram.

• Antony Hewish (United Kingdom, 1924–2021)
  • Antony Hewish won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1974. He was recognized for his part in discovering pulsars.

• Hipparchus (Nicaea, circa 190 BC – 120 BC)
  • Hipparchus is considered the greatest ancient astronomer. He created accurate models for the motion of the Sun and Moon. He also made the first known star catalog.

• Jeremiah Horrocks (United Kingdom, circa 1619–1641)
  • Jeremiah Horrocks was the first person to show that the Moon orbits the Earth in an elliptical (oval) path.

• Su-Shu Huang (China/USA, 1915-1977)
  • Su-Shu Huang developed the idea of a "habitable zone" around stars. This is the distance where a planet could have liquid water on its surface, making it a potential place for life.

• Edwin Powell Hubble (United States, 1889–1953)
  • Edwin Hubble proved that many objects once thought to be just clouds of gas were actually other galaxies far beyond our Milky Way. He also provided evidence for the Hubble–Lemaître law, which shows that the universe is constantly expanding.

• Christiaan Huygens (Netherlands, 1629–1695)
  • Christiaan Huygens discovered Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. He also studied Saturn's rings and developed the wave theory of light.

• Hypatia (Egypt, circa 350–370 – 415 AD)
  • Hypatia was a brilliant female philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer in ancient Alexandria. She was a leading scholar of her time.

J

• James Jeans (United Kingdom, 1877–1946)
  • James Jeans made important contributions to how stars and galaxies form. He studied how gas clouds collapse under gravity to create new stars.

• David C. Jewitt (United Kingdom, 1958–)
  • David Jewitt is known for his discoveries of objects in the outer solar system, especially in the Kuiper belt beyond Neptune.

• Jiao Bingzhen (China, 1689–1726)
  • Jiao Bingzhen was a Chinese painter and astronomer. He combined traditional Chinese art with Western scientific methods, including perspective drawing for astronomical illustrations.

K

• Norio Kaifu (Japan, 1943–2019)
  • Norio Kaifu led the building of the Nobeyama Radio Observatory and the Subaru Telescope. He was also the director of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) from 2012 to 2015.

• Johannes Kepler (Germany, 1571–1630)
  • Johannes Kepler discovered the laws of planetary motion. These laws describe how planets orbit the Sun in elliptical paths, not perfect circles. His work was a major step towards Newton's law of universal gravitation.

• Al-Khujandi (Persia, circa 940–1000)
  • Al-Khujandi discovered that the axial tilt of the Earth is not constant. This means the Earth's tilt changes slightly over very long periods.

• Maria Margarethe Kirch (Germany, 1670–1720)
  • Maria Kirch was one of the first well-known female astronomers. She discovered a comet in 1702.

• Gerard Kuiper (Netherlands/United States, 1905–1973)
  • The Kuiper belt is named after Gerard Kuiper. This is a region of small, icy bodies beyond Neptune. He also made important discoveries about planetary atmospheres and moons.

L

• Jérôme Lalande (France, 1732–1807)
  • Jérôme Lalande was a French astronomer who calculated the distance from the Moon to Earth. He also published important astronomical tables.

• Henrietta Swan Leavitt (United States, 1868–1921)
  • Henrietta Leavitt discovered that Cepheid variable stars pulsate at a rate related to their brightness. This discovery was incredibly important. It allowed astronomers to figure out distances to other galaxies, eventually leading to the discovery that the Universe is expanding.

• Georges Lemaître (Belgium, 1894–1966)
  • Georges Lemaître was the first to propose the theory that the Universe is constantly expanding. This idea is now known as the Hubble–Lemaître law. He also suggested the "primeval atom" theory, which is now called the Big Bang theory.

• Urbain Le Verrier (France, 1811–1877)
  • Urbain Le Verrier used math to predict the existence and location of Neptune. He did this by studying how Neptune's gravity affected the orbit of Uranus. His calculations led directly to Neptune's discovery.

• Percival Lowell (United States, 1855–1916)
  • Percival Lowell believed there was a ninth planet beyond Neptune. He contributed to the calculations that eventually led to the discovery of Pluto.

• Jane Luu (South Vietnam/United States, 1963–)
  • Jane Luu is an astronomer known for co-discovering the first Kuiper Belt objects. Her work helped us understand the outer solar system.

• Bernard Lyot (France, 1897–1952)
  • Bernard Lyot invented the coronagraph. This special telescope allows astronomers to study the Sun's corona (outer atmosphere) without waiting for a solar eclipse.

M

• Johann Heinrich von Mädler (Germany, 1794-1874)
  • Together with Wilhelm Beer, Johann Heinrich Mädler produced the first accurate map of the Moon and of Mars.

• Simon Marius (Germany, 1573–1624)
  • Simon Marius was a German astronomer. He independently discovered Jupiter's four largest moons around the same time as Galileo. He also gave them the names we use today: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.

• Nevil Maskelyne (United Kingdom, 1732–1811)
  • Nevil Maskelyne was the fifth Astronomer Royal of Great Britain. He worked on improving navigation at sea by using astronomical observations.

• John C. Mather (United States, 1946–)
  • John C. Mather won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2006 for his work on the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite. This mission helped confirm the Big Bang theory.

• Michel Mayor (Switzerland, 1942–)
  • Michel Mayor won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2019 for discovering the first exoplanet orbiting a Sun-like star. This opened up a whole new field of astronomy.

• John Michell (United Kingdom, 1724–1793)
  • John Michell was the first person known to suggest the existence of black holes. He theorized about objects so dense that light could not escape their gravity.

• Maria Mitchell (United States, 1818–1889)
  • Maria Mitchell was the first professional female astronomer in the United States. She discovered a comet in 1847 and was a strong advocate for women in science.

• Samuel Molyneux (United Kingdom, 1689–1728)
  • Samuel Molyneux is best known for his attempts to measure the parallax of a star. This led to the discovery of the aberration of light, which is how light from stars appears to shift due to Earth's motion.

• Patrick Moore (United Kingdom, 1923–2012)
  • Patrick Moore was a very popular British amateur astronomer and science broadcaster. He inspired many people to look up at the night sky.

N

• Isaac Newton (United Kingdom, 1643–1727)
  • Isaac Newton was a groundbreaking scientist. He developed the laws of motion and universal gravitation. These laws explain how planets orbit the Sun and how objects fall on Earth. His work is fundamental to astronomy.

O

• Heinrich Wilhelm Matthias Olbers (Germany, 1758–1840)
  • Heinrich Olbers was also part of the "celestial police" group. He helped make the calculations that led to the discovery of many dwarf planets between Mars and Jupiter. He also proposed Olbers' paradox, which asks why the night sky is dark if the universe is infinite and full of stars.

• Jan Hendrik Oort (Netherlands, 1900–1992)
  • Jan Oort proved that the Milky Way galaxy rotates. He also showed that our Sun is not at the center of the Milky Way, but rather in one of its spiral arms. The Oort cloud, a distant region of icy objects, is named after him.

• José Luis Ortiz Moreno (Spain, 1967–)
  • José Luis Ortiz Moreno led the team that discovered the dwarf planet Haumea in 2004.

P

• Eugene Parker (United States, 1927–2022)
  • Eugene Parker was a solar astrophysicist. He predicted the existence of the solar wind, a stream of charged particles flowing from the Sun. NASA's Parker Solar Probe is named in his honor.

• William Parsons (Lord Rosse) (Ireland, 1800–1867)
  • Lord Rosse discovered that some nebulae had a spiral shape. Today, we know these are actually spiral galaxies far outside our own.

• Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin (United States, 1900–1979)
  • Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin was a pioneering astrophysicist. She was the first to propose that stars are mostly made of hydrogen and helium. This was a revolutionary idea at the time.

• James Peebles (Canada/United States, 1935–)
  • Jim Peebles won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2019 for his theoretical discoveries in physical cosmology. His work helped us understand the evolution of the universe from the Big Bang.

• Arno Penzias (United States/Germany, 1933–2024)
  • Arno Penzias shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1978 for discovering the cosmic microwave background radiation. This faint glow is leftover heat from the Big Bang.

• Saul Perlmutter (United States, 1959–)
  • Saul Perlmutter, along with Brian Schmidt and Adam Riess, proved that the expansion of the universe is actually speeding up, not slowing down. This was a surprising discovery!

• Giuseppe Piazzi (Italy, 1746–1826)
  • Giuseppe Piazzi discovered the dwarf planet Ceres. Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

• Ptolemy (Roman Egypt, circa 85–165)
  • Ptolemy was an ancient Greek astronomer and mathematician. His geocentric model of the universe (Earth at the center) was widely accepted for over 1,400 years.

• Pythagoras (Greece, 580 BC–500 BC)
  • Pythagoras was an ancient Greek philosopher and mathematician. He believed the Earth was a sphere and that planets moved in circles, contributing to early astronomical thought.

R

• David Lincoln Rabinowitz (United States, 1960–)
  • David Rabinowitz was a co-discoverer of the dwarf planet Eris in 2006, along with Michael Brown and Chad Trujillo.

• Grote Reber (United States, 1911–2002)
  • Grote Reber was a pioneer in radio astronomy. He built the first parabolic radio telescope and made the first sky maps using radio waves.

• Martin Rees (United Kingdom, 1942–)
  • Martin Rees is a leading astrophysicist and Astronomer Royal. He studies black holes, galaxy formation, and the early universe.

• Giovanni Battista Riccioli (Italy, 1598–1671)
  • Giovanni Riccioli is known for discovering the first double star. He also created a detailed map of the Moon, naming many of its features.

• Mercedes Richards (Jamaica, 1955–2016)
  • Mercedes Richards did important research on binary star systems. She was the first to use a technique called tomography in astronomy. This helped her study how gas flows between interacting stars.

• Adam Riess (United States, 1969–)
  • Adam Riess, along with Saul Perlmutter and Brian Schmidt, proved that the universe's expansion is speeding up. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics for this work.

• Nancy G. Roman (United States, 1925–2018)
  • Nancy Roman is known as the "Mother of Hubble." She played a key role in planning and developing the Hubble Space Telescope.

• Ole Christensen Rømer (Denmark, 1644–1710)
  • Ole Rømer made the first measurement of the speed of light. He discovered that light travels at a finite (not infinite) speed by observing Jupiter's moons.

• Vera Rubin (United States, 1928–2016)
  • Vera Rubin studied how galaxies rotate. Her research provided strong evidence for the existence of dark matter, a mysterious substance that makes up a large part of the universe.

• Martin Ryle (United Kingdom, 1918–1984)
  • Martin Ryle won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1974. He shared it with Antony Hewish for their work on discovering pulsars.

S

• Sadr al-Shari'a al-Asghar (Uzbekistan, d. 1346)
  • Sadr al-Shari'a al-Asghar was a theoretical astronomer and religious scholar. He developed original and complex astronomical theories about time and place.

• Carl Sagan (United States, 1934–1996)
  • Carl Sagan was a famous American astronomer and science communicator. He wrote many popular books and hosted the TV series Cosmos, inspiring millions to learn about space.

• Angelo Secchi (Italy, 1818–1878)
  • Angelo Secchi was one of the first scientists to confidently state that the Sun is a star, just like the ones we see at night. He also pioneered stellar spectroscopy, studying the light from stars to understand what they are made of.

• Shi Shen (China, fl. 4th century BC)
  • Shi Shen, along with Gan De, created China's first star catalogue.

• Brian P. Schmidt (United States, 1967–)
  • Brian Schmidt, along with Saul Perlmutter and Adam Riess, proved that the expansion of the universe is speeding up. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics for this discovery.

• George Smoot (United States, 1945–)
  • George Smoot won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2006 for his work on the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite. This mission helped confirm the Big Bang theory.

• Lyman Spitzer (United States, 1914–1997)
  • Lyman Spitzer was a visionary astrophysicist. He was a strong advocate for space telescopes, and his ideas led to the development of the Hubble Space Telescope.

T

• Jill Tarter (United States, 1944–)
  • Jill Tarter is a leading researcher in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). She also came up with the name "brown dwarfs" for objects that are too big to be planets but too small to be stars.

• Clyde W. Tombaugh (United States, 1906–1997)
  • Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto in 1930. He also found many asteroids during his career.

• Chad Trujillo (United States, 1973–)
  • Chad Trujillo was a co-discoverer of several dwarf planets beyond Pluto, including Quaoar (2002), Makemake (2005), and Eris (2006). This work sparked a debate about how we define a planet.

• Herbert Hall Turner (England, 1861–1930)
  • Herbert Hall Turner coined the term "Parsec". This is a very large unit of distance used to measure how far away objects are outside our solar system.

• Neil deGrasse Tyson (United States, 1958–)
  • Neil deGrasse Tyson is a famous American astrophysicist and science communicator. He is known for making complex science topics easy to understand and exciting for the public.

U

• Ulugh Beg (Uzbekistan, 1394–1449)
  • Ulugh Beg was a Timurid ruler and a very important astronomer. He built a large observatory and produced very accurate star catalogs and astronomical tables.

V

• James Van Allen (United States, 1914–2006)
  • James Van Allen was a space scientist who discovered the radiation belts around Earth, which are now named the Van Allen belts.

• Alexander N. Vyssotsky (Russia/United States, 1888–1973)
  • Alexander Vyssotsky created a catalog of "Dwarf M Stars." This was important because it was the first list of nearby stars identified by their unique light characteristics, not just their movement.

W

• John Archibald Wheeler (United States, 1911–2008)
  • John Archibald Wheeler was a theoretical physicist who popularized the term "wormholes." These are theoretical tunnels in spacetime that could connect distant parts of the universe.

• Robert Wilson (United States, 1936–)
  • Robert Wilson shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1978 for discovering the cosmic microwave background radiation. This faint glow is leftover heat from the Big Bang.

• Aleksander Wolszczan (Poland, 1946–)
  • Aleksander Wolszczan co-discovered the first confirmed exoplanets (planets outside our solar system) and pulsar planets. This was a groundbreaking discovery!

• Thomas Wright (United Kingdom, 1711–1786)
  • Thomas Wright was an English astronomer who theorized that the Milky Way is a flattened disk of stars, and that the nebulae seen in the sky are other galaxies.

Z

• Franz Xaver von Zach (Germany, 1753–1832)
  • Franz Xaver von Zach founded the "celestial police." This was a group of astronomers who searched for new planets after the discovery of Uranus. Their work led to the discovery of the asteroid belt and many dwarf planets between Mars and Jupiter.

• Abraham Zacuto (Spain/Portugal, 1450–1510)
  • Abraham Zacuto's detailed star maps led to big improvements in navigation, especially for sailors exploring new routes.

• Fritz Zwicky (Switzerland/United States, 1898–1974)
  • Fritz Zwicky was the first to use a scientific method to discover the existence of a gravitational problem. He called this problem "dark matter".

See also

In Spanish: Anexo:Astrónomos y astrofísicos para niños

• List of astronomical instrument makers
• List of women astronomers
• List of Russian astronomers and astrophysicists