George Alcock

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

George Eric Deacon Alcock , MBE (born August 28, 1912 in Peterborough , † December 15, 2000 ) was a British astronomer .

He is considered one of the most successful visual explorers of novae and comets . At the beginning his interest in astronomy was limited to meteors and meteor streams, but from 1953 he searched specifically for comets and from 1955 also for novae. His technique consisted of memorizing all star patterns as much as possible in order to recognize any deviation from them immediately.

In 1959 he was able to find two comets in one year, namely C / 1959 Q1 and C / 1959 Q2 five days later. The first discovery was something special for British astronomy, as it was the first discovery by a British man since 1894 by William Frederick Denning . In 1963 (C / 1963 F1) and 1965 (C / 1965 S2) he discovered other comets that were exclusively given his name.

He discovered his first nova in 1967 in the dolphin constellation . A year later the next nova followed in the constellation Fox and in 1970 another in the constellation Schild . His last comet discovery came in 1983 with C / 1983 H1 (IRAS-Araki-Alcock) . In 1991 he also discovered his last nova in the constellation Hercules .

With his limited means, without the use of modern electronics or photometry , in retrospect he can be seen as having been quite a success in his field. Experts are of the opinion that this will probably not be achievable again in this density with his methods.

Meteorology was one of his other areas of interest .

Honors

Alcock was honored with the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for his services . The asteroid (3174) Alcock was named after him. In 1963 he received the Jackson Gwilt Medal from the Royal Astronomical Association.

Web links