- Philibert Jacques Melotte
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Asteroids discovered: 1 676 Melitta January 16, 1909 Philibert Jacques Melotte (January 29, 1880 – March 30, 1961) was a British astronomer whose parents immigrated 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 asteroid 676 Melitta, the only one he discovered, is named after him, in a way. Its name is in fact 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 catalog of deep sky objects but not in Charles Messier's famous catalogue or in the New General Catalogue since it was not proved to be a true cluster until 1938.[1]
Melotte was awarded the Jackson-Gwilt Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1909.
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