Johann Hieronymus Schröter (30 August 1745, Erfurt – 29 August 1816, Lilienthal) was a German astronomer.
Johann Hieronymus Schröter (30 August 1745, Erfurt – 29 August 1816, Lilienthal) was a German astronomer.
Schröter was born in Erfurt, and studied law at Göttingen University from 1762 until 1767, after which he started a ten-year-long legal practice.
In 1777 he was appointed Secretary of the Royal Chamber of George III in Hanover, where he made the acquaintance of two of William Herschel's brothers. In 1779 he acquired a three-foot-long (91 cm, almost one metre) achromatic refractor with 2.25-inch (57 mm) lens (50 mm) to observe the Sun, Moon and Venus. Herschel's discovery of Uranus in 1781 inspired Schröter to pursue astronomy more seriously, and he resigned his post and became chief magistrate and district governor of Lilienthal.
In 1784 he paid 31 Reichsthaler (about 600 Euros of today) for a Herschel reflector of 122 cm focal length and 12 cm aperture. He quickly gained a good name from his observational reports in journals, but was not satisfied and in 1786 paid 600 Reichstaler (an equivalent of six months earnings) for a 214 cm focal length 16.5 cm aperture reflector with eyepieces allowing up to 1,200 magnification, and 26 Thaler for a screw-micrometer. With this he systematically observed Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.
Schröter made extensive drawings of the features of Mars, yet curiously he was always erroneously convinced that what he was seeing was mere cloud formations rather than geographical features. In 1791 he published an important early study on the topography of the Moon entitled Selenotopographische Fragmente zur genauern Kenntniss der Mondfläche. The visual lunar albedo scale developed in this work was later popularised by Thomas Gwyn Elger and now bears his name. In 1793 he was the first to notice the phase anomaly of Venus, now known as the Schröter effect, where the phase appears more concave than geometry predicts.
His two famous assistant astronomers were Karl Ludwig Harding (1796–1805) and Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel (1806–1810).
In 1813, he suffered the disruptions of the Napoleonic Wars: his work was ruined by the French under Vandamme, who destroyed his books, writings and observatory. He never recovered from the catastrophe. [1]
His drawings of Mars were not rediscovered until 1873 (by François J. Terby) and were not published until 1881 (by H. G. van de Sande Bakhuyzen), well after his death.
He was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1794 and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in April 1798. [2]
The lunar crater Schröter and the Martian crater Schroeter are named after him, as is Vallis Schröteri (Schröter's Valley) on the Moon.
Frederick William Herschel was a German-British astronomer and composer. He frequently collaborated with his younger sister and fellow astronomer Caroline Herschel. Born in the Electorate of Hanover, William Herschel followed his father into the military band of Hanover, before emigrating to Great Britain in 1757 at the age of nineteen.
A transient lunar phenomenon (TLP) or lunar transient phenomenon (LTP) is a short-lived change in light, color or appearance on the surface of the Moon. The term was created by Patrick Moore in his co-authorship of NASA Technical Report R-277 Chronological Catalog of Reported Lunar Events, published in 1968.
A refracting telescope is a type of optical telescope that uses a lens as its objective to form an image. The refracting telescope design was originally used in spyglasses and astronomical telescopes but is also used for long-focus camera lenses. Although large refracting telescopes were very popular in the second half of the 19th century, for most research purposes, the refracting telescope has been superseded by the reflecting telescope, which allows larger apertures. A refractor's magnification is calculated by dividing the focal length of the objective lens by that of the eyepiece.
Karl Ludwig Harding was a German astronomer, who discovered Juno, the third asteroid of the main-belt in 1804.
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Georg Karl Friedrich Kunowsky was a German lawyer who was also a talented amateur astronomer.
Johann Friedrich Julius Schmidt was a German astronomer and geophysicist. He was the director of the National Observatory of Athens in Greece from 1858 to 1884. Julius Schmidt was tireless in his work, it was suggested by William Henry Pickering that he perhaps devoted more of his life than any other man to the study of the Moon. During his lifetime, he made some of the most complete lunar maps of the 19th century.
Schröter is a lunar impact crater near the mid-part of the Moon, on the eastern Mare Insularum. It was named after German astronomer Johann Hieronymus Schröter. It lies to the north of the craters Sömmering and Mösting. To the southeast of the crater rim is a rille named the Rima Schröter. This cleft begins at a small crater in the mare, then follows a line to the south-southeast.
William Herbert Steavenson FRAS was an English amateur astronomer.
Lindsay Atkins Eddie FRAS was a South-African amateur astronomer, known for his observations of Venus, Mercury and Mars and 21 comets. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1880. He saw active military service in South Africa and his final rank was that of a Major.
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Lilienthal is a municipality in the administrative district of Osterholz, Lower Saxony, Germany. It borders Bremen.
The National Observatory of Athens is a research institute in Athens, Greece. Founded in 1842, it is the oldest research foundation in Greece. The Observatory was the first scientific research institute built after Greece became independent in 1829, and one of the oldest research institutes in Southern Europe. It was built around the same period as the United States Naval Observatory.
Schröter or Schroeter may refer to:
Philipp Johann Heinrich Fauth was a German elementary school teacher and astronomer who excelled in lunar research conducted during forty years in his observatories in Landstuhl and later Grünwald (Bavaria). Thanks to a donation he could afford one of the highest quality telescopes in Germany. By the unconditional defense of the unscientific glacial cosmogony or world ice theory conceived by Austrian engineer Hanns Hörbiger he succumbed to a mistake he did not admit all his life.
Selenography is the study of the surface and physical features of the Moon. Like geography and areography, selenography is a subdiscipline within the field of planetary science. Historically, the principal concern of selenographists was the mapping and naming of the lunar terrane identifying maria, craters, mountain ranges, and other various features. This task was largely finished when high resolution images of the near and far sides of the Moon were obtained by orbiting spacecraft during the early space era. Nevertheless, some regions of the Moon remain poorly imaged and the exact locations of many features are uncertain by several kilometers. Today, selenography is considered to be a subdiscipline of selenology, which itself is most often referred to as simply "lunar science." The word selenography is derived from the Greek word Σελήνη and γράφω graphō, meaning to write.
Hans Schröder may refer to:
Schröter or Schroeter is a German surname, a variant of Schröder. It may also be written without diacritics as Schroter. It is an occupational name for a cloth cutter or tailor. Notable people with the surname include:
The Celestial police, officially the United Astronomical Society, was a cooperation of numerous European astronomers in the early 19th century. It is mainly known in relation to the search for objects expected between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. It was formed in 1800 at the second European congress of astronomers. At the first such congress, in 1798, the French mathematician Jérôme Lalande had called for a coordinated search, in which each participating observatory would patrol a particular part of the sky. The group confirmed or discovered the four largest minor planets, which would lead to the identification of the asteroid belt. They also initiated the compilation of better star catalogues and the investigation of variable stars. They pioneered international collaboration and communication in astronomy.
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