- Joan Voûte
Joan George Erardus Gijsbertus Voûte (
June 7 ,1879 –August 20 ,1963 ) was a Dutchastronomer .He was born in
Madioen ,Java to aHuguenot family. He studiedcivil engineering at Delft, but while a student he gained an interest in astronomy—studyingvariable star s. After graduating he joined the staff of theLeiden Observatory , where he worked onbinary star s. In 1913 he gained a post at theCape Observatory inSouth Africa , where he worked on double stars andparallax measurements. He became a Fellow of theRoyal Society in 1917. His preliminary account of the parallax ofProxima Centauri was published in 1917, demonstrating that Proxima was the same distance from the Sun as theAlpha Centauri system.He returned to Java in 1919, where he served as an assistant at the Weltevreden meteorological and magnetic observatory. There he was able to gain the interest of wealthy friends for the construction of an observatory. Voûte became the Director, and he selected the 1,300 m altitude Lembang for the site. The main instrument was a 60 cm Zeiss double
refractor . The work of the observatory focused on double stars, parallax measurements, photometry of variable stars and clusters, and so forth. The results were published in the "Lembang Observatory Annals".Following the
Japan ese occupation of Java, Voûte was imprisoned. As a result of his captivity he suffered from poor health, so after the war he moved toAustralia . Later he settled atThe Hague , Holland, where he died in 1963.References
*cite journal
last=O'Connell | first=J. K.
title=Joan George Erardus Gijsbertus Voûte (obituary)
journal=Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society
year=1964 | volume=5 | pages=296–297
url=http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1964QJRAS...5..296.
accessdate=2008-07-02
*cite journal
last = Voûte | first = J.
title=A 13th magnitude star in Centaurus with the same parallax as α Centauri
journal=Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
year=1917 | volume=77 | pages=650–651
url=http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=1917MNRAS..77..650V&db_key=AST&data_type=HTML&format=&high=444c5eb29022736
accessdate=2007-07-09
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