Hermann Carl Vogel

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Not to be confused with Hermann Wilhelm Vogel.

Hermann Carl Vogel (April 3, 1841 – August 13, 1907) was a German astronomer. He was born in Leipzig, in the Germanic state of Saxony.

He was one of the pioneers of the use of the spectroscope in astronomy, and used this instrument to analyze the atmospheres of the planets in the solar system. He was the first to determine the Suns rotation period through Doppler shift.

In 1882 he became the director at the Potsdam Observatory. He is most noted for a discovery he made there in 1890. He found that the spectra of certain stars shifted slightly over time, moving slightly toward the red and then later toward the blue. The interpretation of this result was that the star was moving toward and then away from the Earth, and the shifts in spectra were the result of the doppler shift. These stars appeared to be orbiting around some hidden center of mass, and thus were double stars. However the companion star could not be resolved using a telescope, so they were designated spectroscopic binaries.

By obtaining periodic Doppler shifts in the components of Algol he proved it to be a binary star; thus, Algol was one of the first known spectroscopic binaries (and of course it is in fact an eclipsing binary).