Alexander Vladimirovich Markov (astronomer)

Alexander Wladimirowitsch Markow , Russian Александр Владимирович Марков , (* 1897 in Chernyanka ; † November 19, 1968 ) was a Soviet astronomer and astrophysicist .

After graduating from the University of Petrograd in 1923, he was at the Pulkovo Observatory , where he graduated as an astronomer in 1926. He then worked in the branch of the Research Institute for Geodesy, Aerial Photography and Cartography in Leningrad and at the State Optical Institute. From 1944 he was at the Pulkovo Observatory.

He dealt with instrument making and astronomical photometry (spectrophotometry, radiometry, polarimetry). He developed a theory of the microphotometer and in 1934 he developed the first microphotometer in the Soviet Union with which one could evaluate astronomical photographic plates. Later he studied the lunar surface in particular , was involved in the Soviet project of photographic mapping of the moon (various Luna probes, such as Luna 2 from 1959 with photos of the back of the moon) and measured its surface temperature, for which he sent radiometers with balloons into the troposphere . In 1960 he edited an anthology about the moon at the Pulkovo Observatory.

With NN Mikhelson he also examined the corona of the sun with the help of photometry (on the occasion of the solar eclipses in 1945, 1952).

The moon crater Markov is named after him and Andrei Andrejewitsch Markow .

literature

• EK Kokhan, obituary in: Izv. Glav. Astron. Obvs. v Pulkove 186 (1971) 1
• Aleksandr Nikolaevich Dadaev, Pulkovo Observatory, Nauka Press, Leningrad 1972, English translation NASA Technical Memorandum 1978