Arthur Auwers

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Georg Friedrich Julius Arthur von Auwers (September 12, 1838 – January 24, 1915) was a German astronomer.

He worked at Königsberg (today Kaliningrad). He specialized in astrometry, making very precise measurements of stellar positions and motions. He detected the companion stars of Sirius and Procyon from their effects on the main star's motion, before telescopes were powerful enough to visually observe them. He was from 1866 Secretary to the Berlin Academy, and directed expeditions to measure the transits of Venus, in order to measure the distance from the earth to the Sun more accurately, and therefore be able to more accurately calculate the dimensions of the Solar System with greater precisions. He began a project to unify the all available sky charts, an interest that began with his catalog of nebulae which he published in 1862.