Edison Pettit

Edison Pettit (September 22, 1889 – May 6, 1962) was an American astronomer.

He was born in Peru, Nebraska. Pettit received his bachelor's degree from the Nebraska State Normal School in Peru.[1] He taught astronomy at Washburn College in Topeka, Kansas from 1914 to 1918. He married Hannah Steele, who was an assistant at Yerkes Observatory, and received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1920.

Shortly after he became a staff member at Mount Wilson Observatory. He initially specialized in solar astronomy and built his own thermocouples. He also made visual observations of Mars and Jupiter. Even after his retirement he continued to make spectrographs for various observatories in the machine shop in his home.

Pettit crater on the Moon and another Crater on Mars are named after him.

References

  1. ↑ "1962PASP...74..495N Page 495". adsabs.harvard.edu. Retrieved 2016-03-25.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Edison Pettit.
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 3/26/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.