Milton Lasell Humason

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Milton Lasell Humason , also Milton La Salle Humason (born August 19, 1891 in Dodge Center , Minnesota , † June 18, 1972 in Mendocino , California ) was an American astronomer . With his work at the Mount Wilson Observatory , he made a decisive contribution to the discovery of the expansion of the universe .

From autodidact to astronomer

Milton Humason dropped out of school at the age of 14 and preferred a life in the mountains, which he had learned at a summer camp on Mount Wilson . He made his living as a muleteer. When the Mount Wilson Observatory was being set up on the mountain, which was not yet a road leading up to it, and building materials, equipment and food had to be carried up, he and his herd were hired there to transport loads.

During this time he met the daughter of a technical employee of the observatory and married her in 1911. The engineer did not think much of the relationship with the poorly educated Humason, but he took every opportunity to find work at the observatory and was also active Electrician and porter. When a new caretaker was wanted, he applied and got the job. As a result, he soon became interested in telescopes . When one day a night assistant suddenly stopped due to illness, Humason was used because of his observational skills and his reliability.

Exploration of the spiral nebula

After a while he even advanced to become a permanent assistant; the then director George Hale recognized his extraordinary abilities and in 1919 accepted him into the circle of scientific staff despite his dropping out of school. As a professional astronomer, Humason soon made a name for himself as a conscientious observer, especially in the creation of precise sky recordings and spectrograms .

Dating from around 1920, when the question of the elliptical nebulae like the Andromeda Galaxy two astronomical schools faced - whether it is intra-galactic objects or to own galaxies such as the Milky Way handle - the story is passed down orally that Humason by Harlow Shapley to closer examination on Cepheid photo plates, including images of the Andromeda Nebula, on which he also marked individual points in the interior of the nebula that he believed to be stars. But Shapley was deeply convinced that the nebula was just a cloud of gas, not a cluster of stars, and wiped the marks away with his fingers and ugly words. Had Shapley taken his collaborator more seriously at the time, the nature of the Andromeda Galaxy might not have been recognized by Edwin Hubble four years later .

Humason's investigations as Hubble's assistant played an important role in the development of cosmology , particularly with regard to the discovery of the expansion of the universe and the determination of the Hubble constant . With the 2.5-meter mirror he took numerous spectral images of galaxies, which, despite the powerful telescope, required very long exposure times of up to several nights.

Humason officially withdrew from research in 1957, but discovered comet C / 1961 R1 (Humason) in 1961 . He almost went down in the history of astronomy as the discoverer of the distant dwarf planet Pluto , 11 years before Clyde Tombaugh : he recorded the celestial body, but due to an error in the photo plate , precisely this area was not shown.

The lunar crater Humason and the asteroid (2070) Humason were named after Milton Humason.

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personal data
SURNAME Humason, Milton Lasell
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Humason, Milton La Salle
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American astronomer
DATE OF BIRTH August 19, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Dodge Center , Minnesota
DATE OF DEATH June 18, 1972
Place of death Mendocino , California