Palisa Wolf Star Atlas
The Palisa-Wolf-Sternatlas is a map series published in 1900, which shows in 210 large-scale sheets the entire starry sky visible in Europe .
It was published at the suggestion of the Viennese astronomer Johann Palisa (1848-1925) together with his younger colleague from Heidelberg, Max Wolf , in order to facilitate the discovery and tracing of new asteroids . Palisa had then already about 100 of these minor planets by visual observation at the Great Refractor of the Vienna Observatory discovered while Wolf recently began the first researcher, for this purpose at the new observatory Heidelberg-Königstuhl the astrophotography use.
The 210 star maps in the format 11 by 9 inches were taken in Heidelberg and cut into a systematic sheet according to celestial coordinates.
Palisa was not only concerned with making it easier to discover the many small planets that could be expected, but also with the possibility of finding "lost" asteroids again and thereby determining their orbits more precisely. The star atlas thus became an important tool for planetoid researchers for several decades .
What is also remarkable about this work is that two astronomers competing in their research area were able to decide to cooperate. The "photo pioneer" Wolf surpassed Palisa in the number of discovered asteroids (123 or over 200) in the following decade, because these small bodies quickly revealed themselves on the sky images by a short line trace , while they find Palisa on the telescope by comparison with the star map had to.
literature
- Gottfried Gerstbach : The Asteroids - Drama and Rubble in the Planetary System, Chapter 9 , Star Messenger No. 45/12, Vienna 2002
- Joachim W. Ekrutt: The small planets. Planetoids and their history of discovery , 72 p., Volume 296 of the Kosmos Library, Stuttgart 1977 (p.12 ff: The planet hunt begins )
Web links
- Wolf-Palisa Survey . The star atlas online on the website of the German Astrophysical Virtual Observatory.