- Alexander N. Vyssotsky
Alexander N. Vyssotsky ( _ru. Александр Высоцкий,
May 23 ,1888 –December 31 ,1973 ) was anastronomer . Vyssotsky was born inMoscow ,Russia .During his 35 years at the
McCormick Observatory of theUniversity of Virginia he published many works. His best known is probably a catalog with five lists of stars entitled "Dwarf M Stars Found Spectrophotometrically ". This work was important because it was the first list of nearby stars identified not by their motions in the sky, but by their intrinsic, spectroscopic, characteristics. Until this time, most nearby stars had been identified by their largeproper motions ; however, not all stars close to theSun have a large proper motion, and this selection criteria caused a bias in studies before the advent of Vyssotsky's catalogue. Vyssotsky's survey was carried out at McCormick Observatory using a 10-inch Cookeastrograph , donated by theCarnegie Institution of Washington and refigured byFecker . It was used with an objective prism, which allowedspectra to be taken of all the stars in the field of view simultaneously. The spectra allowed Vyssotsky and others to classify the stars according to the surfacetemperature and gravity of the stars, and they identified thousands of dwarf M stars (which are intrinsically faint, and therefore had to be nearby if they were visible through the 10-inch).In 1929, he married fellow astronomer Emma T. R. Williams, who was from
Philadelphia . She was his life-long scientific collaborator. They had one sonVictor A. Vyssotsky (amathematician andcomputer scientist ) who was involved inMultics project and creator of Darwin computer game. Alexander Vyssotsky died in Winter Park,Florida .External links
* [http://www.astro.virginia.edu/research/observatories/26inch/history/vyssotsky.html Alexander N. Vyssotsky]
* [http://www.google.com/search?q=Alexander+N.+Vyssotsky Search web]
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