Philibert Jacques Melotte
{{Short description|British astronomer}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}
| class="wikitable floatright" style="font-size: 0.9em;"
|+ Asteroids discovered: 1 | ||
| 676 Melitta | 16 January 1909 | {{MPC|676}} |
Philibert Jacques Melotte (29 January 1880 – 30 March 1961) was a British astronomer whose parents emigrated from Belgium.
In 1908 he discovered a moon of Jupiter, today known as Pasiphaë. It was simply designated "Jupiter VIII" and was not given its present name until 1975. The outer main-belt asteroid 676 Melitta, the only asteroid he discovered, is named after the Attic form of the Greek Melissa, the bee, but its resemblance to the discoverer's name is not fortuitous.
The conspicuous star cluster in the Coma Berenices constellation is commonly designated Mel 111 since it appeared in Melotte's 1915 catalogue of star clusters,Melotte, P. J. [http://cdsads.u-strasbg.fr/abs/1915MmRAS..60..175M "A Catalogue of Star Clusters shown on Franklin-Adams Chart Plates"], MmRAS, 1915 but not in Charles Messier's famous catalogue of deep sky objects or in the New General Catalogue since it was not proved to be a true cluster until 1938 by the astronomer R J Trumpler.[http://www.backyard-astro.com/focusonarchive/comaberenice/comaberenice.html The Coma Berenices star cluster] (Melotte 111)
Melotte was awarded the Jackson-Gwilt Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1909. A collection of his papers is held at Cambridge University Library.
See also
- List of astronomical catalogues
- Collinder catalogue - a similar catalogue of open star clusters published by Per Collinder in 1931.
References
{{reflist
|refs=
|title = Minor Planet Discoverers (by number)
|work = Minor Planet Center
|url = http://www.minorplanetcenter.net/iau/lists/MPDiscsNum.html
|date = 23 May 2016
|accessdate = 22 June 2016}}
|author = Hunter, A.
|date = March 1962
|title = Obituary Notices: Philibert Jacques Melotte
|url = http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?1962QJRAS...3...48.&data_type=PDF_HIGH&whole_paper=YES&type=PRINTER&filetype=.pdf
|journal = Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society
|volume = 3
|page = 48
|bibcode = 1962QJRAS...3...48.
|access-date= 22 June 2016}}
|title = Dictionary of Minor Planet Names – (676) Melitta
|last = Schmadel | first = Lutz D.
|publisher = Springer Berlin Heidelberg
|page = 66
|date = 2007
|isbn = 978-3-540-00238-3
|doi = 10.1007/978-3-540-29925-7_677 |chapter = (676) Melitta }}
}}
External links
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20121104093026/http://deepskypedia.com/wiki/The_Melotte_Catalogue_of_Star_Clusters The Melotte Catalogue of Star Clusters]
- [https://janus.lib.cam.ac.uk/db/node.xsp?id=EAD%2FGBR%2F0180%2FRGO%2074 RGO 74: Papers of Philippe Jacques Melotte]
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Melotte, Philibert Jacques}}
Category:20th-century British astronomers
Category:British people of Belgian descent
Category:Discoverers of asteroids
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