Gordon Pettengill

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Gordon Hemenway Pettengill (born February 10, 1926 in Providence ) is an American radio astronomer .

Pettengill studied physics at MIT and at the University of California, Berkeley , where he received his doctorate, interrupted by military service in Europe during World War II . He then did research in the field of radar astronomy , where he was able to receive the first echo from Venus in 1958 at the Lincoln Laboratory (connection earth-Venus-earth ).

Pettengill was one of the first astronomers to use radar in astronomy after World War II. With the Millstone Radar of the MIT Lincoln Laboratory, which went into operation in 1957, he followed the orbit of the Soviet Sputnik satellite and made the first radar observations of Venus in 1961. The investigation provided the most accurate distance values ​​(determination of the astronomical unit) in the solar system up to that point. In 1960 he made a radar map of the moon. With the Arecibo telescope he succeeded in correcting the traditional value of Mercury's rotation period in the early 1960s. He was subsequently a pioneer of radar studies of planets, moons (such as the Galilean moons of Jupiter), asteroids (Icarus) and comets (Encke) as well as the rings of Saturn. He was involved in the Viking probes to Mars and from the late 1970s on the Pioneer and Magellan missions to Venus (with radar mapping of the surface).

In 1994 he received the Magellanic Premium , and in 1997 the Charles A. Whitten Medal from the American Geophysical Union . The asteroid (3831) Pettengill is named after him. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (since 1973) and the National Academy of Sciences (since 1979).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Price, R., Green, PE, Jr., Goblick, TJ, Jr., Kingston, RH, Kraft, LG, Jr., Pettengill, GH, Silver, R., and Smith, WB: Radar echoes from Venus. In: Science, 1959, 751-753.
  2. ^ The Magellanic Premium of the American Philosophical Society , website of the APS . Retrieved October 29, 2019.
  3. ↑ 1997 Charles A. Whitten Medal Winner Gordon Pettengill
personal data
SURNAME Pettengill, Gordon
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pettengill, Gordon Hemenway (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American radio astronomer
DATE OF BIRTH February 10, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Providence