Frank Elmore Ross

Frank Elmore Ross (born April 2, 1874 in San Francisco , USA , † September 21, 1960 in Altadena ( California )) was an American astronomer and physicist .

Ross received his PhD from the University of California in 1901 . In 1905 he became director of a station at the International Latitude Observatory in Gaithersburg , Maryland . From 1915 he worked as a physicist at the Eastman Kodak Company in Rochester , New York . In 1924 he accepted a position at the Yerkes Observatory , where he worked until his retirement in 1939.

In 1905 he succeeded in calculating the orbit of Saturn's moon Phoebe . Later he determined the orbits of Jupiter's moons Himalia and Elara . While at Eastman Kodak, he developed photographic emulsions and wide-angle lenses for astronomical applications.

At the Yerkes Observatory he succeeded Edward Emerson Barnard and took over his collection of photographic plates. Ross decided to repeat Barnard's series of photographs and compare the plates using a blink comparator. In this way he discovered over 400 variable stars and more than 1000 stars with high proper motion . Some of these high-speed runners , like Ross 154 , turned out to be neighbors of the sun .

During the opposition of Mars in 1926, he photographed the planet with the 1.5 m reflecting telescope of the Mount Wilson Observatory , using various color filters. In the following year he took ultraviolet images of Venus , which for the first time revealed structures in the planet's dense cloud cover.

In 1930 Ross was elected to the National Academy of Sciences . In his memory, the moon crater Ross was named after him and James Clarke Ross and the Mars crater Ross was named after him.

Web links

• FE Ross publications in the Astrophysics Data System
• Curriculum vitae
• Career data