Karl Friedrich Küstner
Karl Friedrich Küstner (born August 22, 1856 in Görlitz , † October 15, 1936 in Mehlem (now part of Bonn)) was an astronomy professor in Bonn . He is considered to be the discoverer of the polar motion of the earth's body.
Life
Küstner worked as an observator at the Hamburg observatory and since 1884 at the Berlin observatory . From 1891 to 1925 he was director of the royal observatory in Bonn (his predecessor there was Eduard Schönfeld ).
By 1887 the government approved the purchase of a refractor. Küstner chose a double refractor with a focal length of 5 m. One tube was used for optical observation and precise tracking of the telescope, the other was designed for the photographic recordings. So he initiated the change from visual to photographic astronomy.
In 1900 Küstner was able to start recording. He made measurements mainly on star clusters with the aim of determining the relative positions of the stars, but also in order to possibly obtain relative movements ( self-movements ) from recordings that had been collected over the years . His estate contained around 600 astronomical recordings on glass from 1900 to 1922. Due to their high quality, these plates served decades later as the basis for the flourishing of Bonn astrometry and the Bonn self-movement studies.
In 1911/12 he was the rector of the university.
Even before his time in Bonn presented Küstner 1885/1888 found that in longer series of measurements of latitude ( latitude ) comes to light a small periodic influence of about 0.3 "(10 meters). It only accounts for about one millionth of the Earth's radius of lay According to current knowledge, the pole movement takes the form of a spiral oscillation of 5–10 m amplitude and about 430 days ( Chandler period ).
Due to the discovery of Küstner, who u. a. Seth Carlo Chandler and Richard Schumann studied closer, who founded astronomers the International wide service with five world observatories at 39 ° latitude (later International Polar Motion Service (IPMS) and the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS, International Earth Rotation )).
In 1905 Küstner determined the solar parallax and the aberration constant from spectrographic measurements. In 1908 he also created a star catalog with 10,663 precise star words .
Honors
- In 1910 Küstner received the gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society .
- In the same year he was elected a member of the Leopoldina and a corresponding member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences .
- Since 1913 Küstner was a member of the National Academy of Sciences
- In 1917 he was elected a corresponding member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences .
- At least in the 1930s there was a Friedrich-Küstner-Straße in Görlitz ( Zgorzelec ).
literature
- Josef Hopmann: Küstner, Friedrich. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 13, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1982, ISBN 3-428-00194-X , p. 240 ( digitized version ).
- Schmidt, H., Astronomers of the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn - Your Life and Work 1819–1966 , Bouvier Verlag, Bonn (1990). ISBN 3416806042 .
Web links
- Karl Friedrich Küstner's estate in the ULB Bonn
- Literature by and about Karl Friedrich Küstner in the catalog of the German National Library
- Publications by F. Küstner in the Astrophysics Data System
- Obituaries for F. Küstner in the Astrophysics Data System
- History of the Bonn observatory
Individual evidence
- ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 142.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Küstner, Karl Friedrich |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Küstner, Friedrich |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German astronomer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 22, 1856 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Goerlitz |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 15, 1936 |
| Place of death | Flour |