X-Nico

10 unusual facts about Yerkes Observatory


Adriaan Blaauw

In the 1950s he worked a few years at the Yerkes Observatory, before returning to Europe in 1957 to become director of the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute in Groningen.

Albrecht Unsöld

His analysis of the B0 star Tau Scorpii, obtained on his 1939 visit to Yerkes and McDonald Observatories, provided the first detailed analysis of a star other than the Sun, and he was able to determine the physics and composition of the star’s atmosphere.

Burnham Double Star Catalogue

By the time Burnham retired from Yerkes Observatory, he had accumulated material for a revision of his catalogue.

Catherine Wolfe Bruce

Between 1889 and 1899 she donated funds to the Harvard College Observatory (U.S.A.), Yerkes Observatory (U.S.A.) and Landessternwarte Heidelberg-Königstuhl (Germany), run by Max Wolf at the time, to buy new telescopes at each of those institutes.

Cornelis Johannes van Houten

Born in The Hague, he spent his entire career at Leiden University except for a brief period (1954–1956) as research assistant at Yerkes Observatory.

Frank Elmore Ross

He accepted a position at the Yerkes Observatory in 1924 and worked there until his retirement in 1939.

At Yerkes Observatory he was the successor to the late E. E. Barnard, inheriting Barnard's collection of photographic plates.

Georg Hermann Struve

At Yerkes Observatory, he again met his cousin Otto and reanalyzed observations of the complex multiple star system zeta Cancri by their grandfather Otto Wilhelm von Struve.

John S. Paraskevopoulos

In 1919, he went to America for two years, spending part of that time working at Yerkes Observatory where he met and married Dorothy W. Block.

W. Albert Hiltner

Director of the Yerkes Observatory for many years, while there he designed and built a rotatable telescope for polarization studies and developed photometric instrumentation.