Richard Conn Henry

Last updated

Richard Conn Henry (born 7 March 1940 [1] ) is an Academy Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University, author of one book and over 200 publications on the topics of astrophysics and various forms of astronomy including optical, radio, ultraviolet, and X-ray. He reports being part of a team that discovered "vastly more baryons than had ever before been found in the universe". [2] He is also cited in the effort to recategorize Pluto as a dwarf planet. [3] [4]

He initially joined the Johns Hopkins University Physics Department in 1968 as the first JHU astronomer since 1908. After a stint at NASA, he returned to help attract in 1981 the Space Telescope Science Institute to JHU, an organization that now employs 500, including 100 PhDs.

More recently he has attracted popular press for the SETI ecliptic search idea [5] and the Hanke–Henry Permanent Calendar. [6] The SETI ecliptic search idea suggests focusing SETI efforts in the ecliptic plane in which distant hypothetical observers can see the Earth's transit of the sun. The Hanke–Henry Permanent Calendar is one in which the number of days in a year is always divisible by seven, such that holidays always fall on the same day of the week. Most years have only four quarters of 91 days, while every five or six years an extra week is inserted at the end of December.

He is also active in various organizations, including the Streit Council, where as of 2012 he is president; [7] the Maryland Space Grant Consortium; and an organization he founded, the Henry Foundation, which "sponsors improved worldwide understanding of physics". He earned a Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1967.

He is cited for providing, for black holes that are rotating, and/or are electrically charged, the Kretschmann scalar, which characterizes their degree of curvature.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clyde Tombaugh</span> American astronomer (1906–1997), discoverer of Pluto

Clyde William Tombaugh was an American astronomer. He discovered the ninth planet Pluto in 1930, the first object to be discovered in what would later be identified as the Kuiper belt. At the time of discovery, Pluto was considered a planet, but was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006. Tombaugh also discovered many asteroids, and called for the serious scientific research of unidentified flying objects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zodiac</span> Area of the sky divided into twelve signs

The zodiac is a belt-shaped region of the sky that extends approximately 8° north and south of the ecliptic, the apparent path of the Sun across the celestial sphere over the course of the year. Also within this zodiac belt appear the Moon and the brightest planets, along their orbital planes. The zodiac is divided along the ecliptic into 12 equal parts ("signs"), each occupying 30° of celestial longitude. These signs roughly correspond to the astronomical constellations with the following modern names: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pluto</span> Dwarf planet

Pluto is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. It is the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object to directly orbit the Sun. It is the largest known trans-Neptunian object by volume, by a small margin, but is less massive than Eris. Like other Kuiper belt objects, Pluto is made primarily of ice and rock and is much smaller than the inner planets. Pluto has roughly one-sixth the mass of Earth's moon, and one-third its volume.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Celestial sphere</span> Imaginary sphere of arbitrarily large radius, concentric with the observer

In astronomy and navigation, the celestial sphere is an abstract sphere that has an arbitrarily large radius and is concentric to Earth. All objects in the sky can be conceived as being projected upon the inner surface of the celestial sphere, which may be centered on Earth or the observer. If centered on the observer, half of the sphere would resemble a hemispherical screen over the observing location.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frank Drake</span> American astronomer and astrophysicist (1930–2022)

Frank Donald Drake was an American astrophysicist and astrobiologist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">28978 Ixion</span> Plutino

28978 Ixion (, provisional designation 2001 KX76) is a large trans-Neptunian object and a possible dwarf planet. It is located in the Kuiper belt, a region of icy objects orbiting beyond Neptune in the outer Solar System. Ixion is classified as a plutino, a dynamical class of objects in a 2:3 orbital resonance with Neptune. It was discovered in May 2001 by astronomers of the Deep Ecliptic Survey at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, and was announced in July 2001. The object is named after the Greek mythological figure Ixion, who was a king of the Lapiths.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Astronomical symbols</span> Symbols in astronomy

Astronomical symbols are abstract pictorial symbols used to represent astronomical objects, theoretical constructs and observational events in European astronomy. The earliest forms of these symbols appear in Greek papyrus texts of late antiquity. The Byzantine codices in which many Greek papyrus texts were preserved continued and extended the inventory of astronomical symbols. New symbols have been invented to represent many planets and minor planets discovered in the 18th to the 21st centuries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael E. Brown</span> American astronomer (born 1965)

Michael E. Brown is an American astronomer, who has been professor of planetary astronomy at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) since 2003. His team has discovered many trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs), including the dwarf planet Eris, which was originally thought to be bigger than Pluto, triggering a debate on the definition of a planet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James W. Christy</span> American astronomer

James Walter "Jim" Christy is an American astronomer known for discovering Charon, the largest moon of the dwarf planet Pluto.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David C. Jewitt</span> British-American astronomer (born 1958)

David Clifford Jewitt is a British-American astronomer who studies the Solar System, especially its minor bodies. He is based at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he is a Member of the Institute for Geophysics and Planetary Physics, the Director of the Institute for Planets and Exoplanets, Professor of Astronomy in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and Professor of Astronomy in the Department of Earth, Planetary and Space Sciences. He is best known for being the first person to discover a body beyond Pluto and Charon in the Kuiper belt.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marc Buie</span> American astronomer

Marc William Buie is an American astronomer and prolific discoverer of minor planets who works at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado in the Space Science Department. Formerly he worked at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, and was the Sentinel Space Telescope Mission Scientist for the B612 Foundation, which is dedicated to protecting Earth from asteroid impact events.

Leuschner Observatory, originally called the Students' Observatory, is an observatory jointly operated by the University of California, Berkeley and San Francisco State University. The observatory was built in 1886 on the Berkeley campus. For many years, it was directed by Armin Otto Leuschner, for whom the observatory was renamed in 1951. In 1965, it was relocated to its present home in Lafayette, California, approximately 10 miles (16 km) east of the Berkeley campus. In 2012, the physics and astronomy department of San Francisco State University became a partner.

Jay Myron Pasachoff was an American astronomer. Pasachoff was Field Memorial Professor of Astronomy at Williams College and the author of textbooks and tradebooks in astronomy, physics, mathematics, and other sciences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">132524 APL</span> Asteroid visited by New Horizons

132524 APL (provisional designation 2002 JF56) is a small background asteroid in the intermediate asteroid belt. It was discovered by Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research in May 2002, and imaged by the New Horizons space probe on its flyby in June 2006, when it was passing through the asteroid belt. The stony S-type asteroid measures approximately 2.5 kilometers (1.6 miles) in diameter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">50000 Quaoar</span> Ringed dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt

Quaoar is a large, ringed dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a region of icy planetesimals beyond Neptune. It has an elongated ellipsoidal shape with an average diameter of 1,090 km (680 mi), about half the size of the dwarf planet Pluto. The object was discovered by American astronomers Chad Trujillo and Michael Brown at the Palomar Observatory on 4 June 2002. Quaoar's surface contains crystalline water ice and ammonia hydrate, which suggests that it might have experienced cryovolcanism. A small amount of methane is present on its surface, which can only be retained by the largest Kuiper belt objects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kerberos (moon)</span> Small natural satellite of Pluto

Kerberos is a small natural satellite of Pluto, about 19 km (12 mi) in its longest dimension. Kerberos is also the second-smallest moon of Pluto, after Styx. It was the fourth moon of Pluto to be discovered and its existence was announced on 20 July 2011. It was imaged, along with Pluto and its four other moons, by the New Horizons spacecraft in July 2015. The first image of Kerberos from the flyby was released to the public on 22 October 2015.

The Hanke–Henry Permanent Calendar (HHPC) is a proposal for calendar reform. It is one of many examples of leap week calendars, calendars that maintain synchronization with the solar year by intercalating entire weeks rather than single days. It is a modification of a previous proposal, Common-Civil-Calendar-and-Time (CCC&T). With the Hanke–Henry Permanent Calendar, every calendar date always falls on the same day of the week. A major feature of the calendar system is the abolition of time zones.

Nadia Zakamska is a Russian-American astronomer who is a professor at Johns Hopkins University.

David Gerdes (born 1964) is an American astrophysicist, professor, and administrator at the University of Michigan. He is known for his research on trans-Neptunian objects, particularly for his discovery of the dwarf planet, 2014 UZ224.

2020 SW is a tiny near-Earth asteroid discovered by the Mount Lemmon Survey on 18 September 2020, six days before it made its closest approach to Earth. The asteroid passed within 21,600 kilometres (13,400 mi) from Earth's surface on 24 September 2020 11:13 UT, within the geostationary altitude of 36,000 kilometres (22,000 mi). The encounter with Earth perturbed the asteroid's heliocentric trajectory from an Apollo-type orbit to an Aten-type orbit with a semi-major axis within one astronomical unit from the Sun. As a result, the asteroid will not make any close approaches to Earth within 0.01 astronomical units (4 LD) in the next 200 years.

References

  1. Henry, Richard. "Richard Conn Henry" (PDF). Physics & Astronomy | Johns Hopkins University.
  2. "Richard Conn Henry: Professional Biography" (PDF). Physics & Astronomy | Johns Hopkins University.
  3. "Pluto Not a Planet, Astronomers Rule". National Geographic News. 2006-08-24. Archived from the original on September 16, 2018. Retrieved 2019-02-24.
  4. "Down With Pluto!". henry.pha.jhu.edu. Retrieved 2019-02-24.
  5. "SETI on the Ecliptic". www.centauri-dreams.org. Retrieved 2019-02-24.
  6. "A Calendar that Never Changes and the World on the Same Time?". www.accuweather.com. Retrieved 2019-02-24.
  7. "The Streit Council – Board of Directors". streitcouncil.org. Retrieved 2019-02-24.

Further reading