- Frederick Hanley Seares
Frederick Hanley Seares (
May 17 ,1873 –July 20 ,1964 ) was an Americanastronomer . He worked atMount Wilson Observatory and won theBruce Medal in 1940.Seares was born in
Michigan in 1873 and grew up inIowa andsouthern California . He earned hisBachelor of Science degree at theUniversity of California and later studied inParis andBerlin . Later Seares taught and researchedcomet s andvariable star s for eight years at theUniversity of Missouri–Columbia (whereHarlow Shapley studied under him). In 1909, Seares joined the Mount Wilson Observatory, where he remained for 36 years, 15 of them as assistant director.Seares served as president of the
Astronomical Society of the Pacific in 1929.Seares used
astrophotography as part of Jacobus Kapteyn's effort to uncover the structure of thesidereal universe through research of "selected areas." Seares standardized the stellar magnitude system and extended it beyond the 18th magnitude, using absorbing wire gauze screens and reducedaperture s to compare stars of varyingbrightness es. Seares also made contributions to the measurement and interpretation of stellar color indices and wrote on the brightness of theMilky Way compared to other galaxies.Seares also studied interstellar absorption and reddening of starlight.
Seares died in 1964. The crater Seares on the
Moon is named after him.External links
* [http://www.phys-astro.sonoma.edu/BruceMedalists/Seares/index.html Bruce Medal page]
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