Sherburne Wesley Burnham | |
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| Born | (1838-12-12)December 12, 1838 |
| Died | March 11, 1921(1921-03-11) (aged 82) |
Sherburne Wesley Burnham (December 12, 1838 – March 11, 1921) was an Americanastronomer.
For more than 50 years Burnham spent all his free time observing the heavens, mainly concerning himself withbinary stars.
Sherburne Wesley Burnham was born inThetford, Vermont.[1] His parents were Roswell O. Burnham and Marinda (née Foote) Burnham.[2]
He graduated from the academy in Thetford, and that was the extent of his schooling.[1] He taught himself shorthand, and by 1858 was inNew York City.
Burnham was a reporter for the Union Army inNew Orleans during theCivil War. While in New Orleans, he bought a copy of a popular bookGeography of the Heavens,[3] which piqued his interest in astronomy.
After the war, he moved toChicago and worked as acourt reporter for over 20 years. At night Burnham was an amateur astronomer, except for four years (1888–1892) he worked as a professional astronomer atLick Observatory. He left court reporting in 1902, but remained in Chicago. From 1897–1914 he was an astronomer atYerkes Observatory.[1]
During the 1840s it was believed that essentially all the binary stars visible to the instruments then available had been found.Friedrich Struve (catalog abbr.Σ) and his sonOtto Struve (catalog abbr.σ) had catalogued a good number of binary stars working at theDorpat andPulkovo observatories, using 23 cm and 38 cmtelescopes.
From 1872–1877, with his small 15 cm (5.9 in) telescope, Burnham found 451 new double stars, with the help of a European astronomer, baronDembowski, who measured exact positions and separations of Burnham’s newly discovered binaries.[1]
In 1873–1874, he produced a catalog ofdouble stars. He became a fellow of theRoyal Astronomical Society. He continued to identify double stars, and later published theGeneral Catalogue of 1,290 Double Stars. In 1906, he published theBurnham Double Star Catalogue, containing 13,665 pairs of stars.
The quality of Burnham's work opened the doors of observatories for him and he had access to more powerful instruments atLick,Yerkes, and other observatories. He is credited with having discovered 1,340 binary stars.
Burnham discovered the first example of, what would be called a half century later, aHerbig–Haro object, calledBurnham's Nebula (now labeled asHH 255).
He received theGold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1894. TheFrench Academy of Sciences awarded him theLalande Prize for 1904.[4]
Thelunar craterBurnham andasteroid834 Burnhamia were named in his honour.
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