Edmund Halley
(Edmund or Edmond Halley; London, 1656-Greenwich, Great Britain, 1742) English astronomer.He was the first to catalog the stars in the southern sky, in his work Catalogus stellarum australium .In 1682 he observed and calculated the orbit of the comet that bears his name, and announced his return at the end of 1758, according to a theory of his that defended the existence of elliptical path comets associated with the solar system.In the most important of his works, Synopsis astronomiae cometicae (1705), he applied Newton's laws of motion to all available data on comets.Among other contributions in the field of astronomy, he demonstrated the existence of proper motion in stars, which reduced the validity of the oldest observations, and studied the complete revolution of the Moon over a period of eighteen years.His Astronomical Tables , on which he worked until his death, were valid for many years.
Edmund Halley
Contributor From Newton in his works on the gravitational attraction between bodies, Edmund Halley was the first astronomer to predict the return of comets periodically near the Earth; his last name gave name to the most famous of them.From a wealthy social background, he devoted himself from his youth to mathematics and astronomy.In 1676 he embarked for the island of Santa Elena, in the South Atlantic; there he would carry out the first cataloging of the stars in the southern sky.
His work opened the doors of English scientific society to him and, on the occasion of a project to develop a theory on gravitation and the motion of astral bodies, he came into contact with Isaac Newton.The dialogue and cooperation between the two scientists led to the conception of the famous general law of gravity, which appeared in the book Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica ( Mathematical principles of natural philosophy , 1687 ) by Newton, which Halley himself prefaced and sponsored for the editors of the work.
From 1720 until his death he was director of the Greenwich Observatory and Astronomer Royal, a prestigious position that John Flamsteed and James Bradley held before and after him.As a continuation of his works on astronomy, and applying Newton's laws, he described the parabolic orbits of a total of twenty-four comets in his book Synopsis astronomiae cometicae ( Synopsis of the astronomy of comets , 1705), and proved that the comets that had been observed in the years 1531, 1607 and 1682 were actually returns of the same comet.Of that same comet, which would later be called Halley's Comet in his honor, he predicted that it would return in the year 1758.Sixteen years after Edmund Halley's death, astronomers confirmed the complete accuracy of his prediction.
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