Noah McClannahan
Mr. Percival
DE Astronomy
January 8 2015
Friedrich
Bessel Biography
The
Astronomer I have received for this project is named Friedrich Bessel.
Friedrich Willhelm Bessel was born on July twenty second 1784. Bessel was born in Minden Germany. He was
born at the Minden Ravensberd Administrative. He was the second son of a civil
servant. At the age of fourteen Bessel sought an apprentice ship. He found the
import and export concern of Kulenkamp at Bermen. The business was a cargo ship
business and that led him to use his math skills to solve problems with
navigation. This lead to Bessels interest in the heavens as a way of determinty
longitude. Bessel realized a major
figure around this time named Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers. Olbers was a major
figure of German astronomy at the time. He
was known for orbital calculation of halies comet in 1804. He used old
observations taken by Thomas Harriot and Nathaniel Torporley in 1607. A few
years passed and Bessel decided to leave
kulenkamp. He became the assistant to
Johann Hieronymus Schröter's at Lilienthal observatory in Bremen
Germany. While he was assisting he worked on James Bradleys stellar
observations to get the positions of 3222 stars. January of 1810 Bessel was promoted to director
of the observatory at age 25 by kind Fredrick William iii of Prussia. Bessel
then decided to publish his atmospheric refraction derived from Bradley’s
observations. This won him the Lalande prize for the French Academy of Sciences
in 1811. Bessel decided to intricate the fundamenta Astronomiae based on the observations
of Bradley while the observatory was being worked on. Königsberg
observatory had its grand opening and operation in 1813. Around 1819, Bessel
determined the position of 50000 different starts by used the Meridian circle
created by Reichenbach. With this Bessel was able to achieve what he is best
known for. Bessel was the first to use parallax in calculation the distance to
a star. Bessels measurements allowed him to realize the motions of Sirius and Procyon.
He realized that the motions of those where caused by gravitational attraction.
His Dark companion claim in 1844 was the first correct claim. This also lead to
the discovery of Sirius b. Bessel showed how to solve to Geodesic problem. He
observed easy Prussia and combined the Prussian and Russian triangulation networks.
This lead to him obtaining an estimate of the figure of earth and is referred
to today as the Bessel ellipsoid. Bessel did not have a university education
but became a major impact in the astronomy community. He was elected to the
royal society and became a member of the Royal
Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1823. Also the largest crater in the Moon's Mare Serenitatis is named Bessel after him. Bessels
contributed in the discovery of the planet Neptune. Bessel won the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical
Society in 1829 and 1841. Bessel developed what are now known as Bessel functions. This was key in
solving differential equations. This method is also used in quantum physics.
This also made him a very influential mathematician. Bessel got very sick of
illness. Bessel then died in March 1846 in his Observatory. He died from
retroperitoneal fibrosis. He died just before the discovery of Neptune by his
friends and colleagues at the Berlin Observatory. Overall Friedrich Bessel was
a very influential astronomer and mathematician of his time.
Sources:
http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Bessel.html
https://cosmology.carnegiescience.edu/timeline/1838
http://messier.seds.org/xtra/Bios/bessel.html
