Sherburne Wesley Burnham facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Sherburne Wesley Burnham
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| Born | December 12, 1838 |
| Died | March 11, 1921 (aged 82) |
Sherburne Wesley Burnham (born December 12, 1838 – died March 11, 1921) was an American astronomer. For more than 50 years, Burnham spent all his free time looking at the sky. He was especially interested in binary stars, which are two stars that orbit around each other.
Contents
Biography: The Life of an Astronomer
Sherburne Wesley Burnham was born in Thetford, Vermont. His parents were Roswell O. Burnham and Marinda (née Foote) Burnham. He finished school at an academy in Thetford, which was all the formal education he had. He taught himself shorthand, a fast way of writing, and by 1858 he was working in New York City.
During the American Civil War, Burnham worked as a reporter for the Union Army in New Orleans. While he was there, he bought a book called Geography of the Heavens. This book sparked his interest in astronomy.
After the war, he moved to Chicago. For over 20 years, he worked as a court reporter. This meant he wrote down everything said in court. At night, Burnham was an amateur astronomer, meaning he studied the stars as a hobby. For four years (1888–1892), he worked as a professional astronomer at Lick Observatory. He stopped being a court reporter in 1902 but stayed in Chicago. From 1897 to 1914, he was an astronomer at Yerkes Observatory.
Discovering Double Stars
In the 1840s, many astronomers thought that most of the binary stars that could be seen with telescopes had already been found. Famous astronomers like Friedrich Struve and his son Otto Struve had created large lists of binary stars. They used powerful telescopes at observatories like Dorpat and Pulkovo.
But Sherburne Burnham proved them wrong! From 1872 to 1877, using his own small 15-centimeter telescope, Burnham found 451 new double stars. He got help from a European astronomer, Baron Ercole Dembowski, who carefully measured the exact positions of these new stars.
In 1873 and 1874, Burnham created his own list of double stars. He became a member of the Royal Astronomical Society, a very important group for astronomers. He kept finding more double stars and later published a huge book called the General Catalogue of 1,290 Double Stars. In 1906, he released the Burnham Double Star Catalogue, which contained an amazing 13,665 pairs of stars!
Because of the excellent quality of his work, Burnham was given access to even more powerful telescopes. He used instruments at Lick Observatory, Yerkes Observatory, and other places. He is known for discovering 1,340 binary stars in total.
Burnham also discovered something special that was later called a Herbig–Haro object. This is a small patch of gas and dust that glows brightly around newly formed stars. He called it Burnham's Nebula (now known as HH 255).
Honors and Recognition
Sherburne Wesley Burnham received many awards for his important work.
- In 1894, he was given the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society. This is one of the highest honors in astronomy.
- The French Academy of Sciences awarded him the Lalande Prize in 1904.
To honor his contributions, a lunar crater on the Moon was named Burnham. Also, an asteroid called 834 Burnhamia was named after him.
See also
In Spanish: Sherburne Wesley Burnham para niños
