Lewis A. Swift

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lewis A. Swift

Lewis A. Swift (born February 20, 1820 in Clarkson , New York , † January 5, 1913 in Marathon , New York) was an American astronomer .

He discovered several comets , such as the short-period comet Swift-Tuttle , as well as over 1,000 objects in the NGC catalog . Swift was married twice, first in 1850 to Lucretia Hunt and in second marriage in 1864 to Carrie D. Topping. His son Edward D. Swift is from his second marriage.

Although Swift had never had a college education , he was awarded the Jackson Gwilt Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1897 . The lunar crater Swift and the asteroid (5035) Swift are named after him.

Discoveries

The following list features Swift's most famous discoveries. For a number of the objects in the NGC, double observations of the same object were incorrectly registered as two different objects; such double observations are listed.

Comets:

Galaxies:

Image of the galaxy NGC 34, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope
The galaxies NGC 6050A (left) and NGC 6050B (right) captured by the Hubble Space Telescope

Web links