Angelo Secchi

Pietro Angelo Secchi (June 18th 1818 - February 26th 1878) is a Italian astronomer , one of the pioneers of the Spectroscopie.

Biography

Secchi is born with Reggio from Emilie. It enters the Society of Jesus at 16 years in 1833. It is ordered priest in 1847. At the time of the Italian Révolution of 1848 the Jesuits must leave Rome. It passes by Paris to go in England then to the the United States where he becomes professor of Physique. In the United States it meets Matthew Fontaine Maury, under the influence of Maury it is directed towards the Météorologie. The Expédition of Rome in 1849 puts an end to the revolutionary disorders and allows the return of the Jesuits in Italy. In 1850 it takes the direction of the Observatoire of the Vatican. It makes build a new observatory on the roof of the Saint-Ignace church in Rome. Secchi dies in Rome in 1878.

Research

Astrophysical Astronomy and

Its first significant work is a revision of the catalog of double stars of Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve, it publishes a catalog of more than: 10000 stars in 1859. During the same period he studies Jupiter, Saturn and Mars, one of the charts of Mars that he establishes comprises the mention of Antlantic canali which is the first use of the term channel to describe a characteristic of Mars, although what he describes does not have any relationship with the Canaux Martians that Giovanni Schiaparelli will believe to discover in 1877. It establishes also a detailed chart of the crater Copernic. Its work on the Planet S is included in It quadro fisico LED sistema solare secondo the piu recenti osservazioni , published in 1859.

But it is in the field of the Astrophysique that its work is noticed the most, in particular its studies of the Sun. During a forwarding in Spain to study the eclipse July 18th 1860, the photographs taken make it possible to establish that the solar Couronne and the protuberances rising with the top of the Chromosphère are many characteristics of the Sun and not optical illusions or lunar mountains enlightened. Secchi publishes in French the sun. Exposed principal modern discoveries in 1870, state of the art of the study of the Sun at the time. Secchi is the discoverer of the spicules.

Its spectroscopic studies of: 4000 stars enable him to establish one of the first classifications based on their spectrum. Secchi distinguishes three classes from stars whose representatives are Alpha Lyrae (Véga), Alpha Herculis and Alpha Bootis (Arcturus).

Physical

The most known work of Secchi in this field is Sulla unitá delle forze fisiche - the unit of the physical forces published in 1864, in which it tries to derive all the natural phenomena from the kinetic energy. The second edition in two volumes in 1878 is translated into French, English, German and Russian. However, influenced by its faith, it makes go up the main causes with God and an act of divine creation.

Meteorology

Secchi in this field is a disciple of Matthew Fontaine Maury. He studies the northern lights, the origin of the Grêle, the effects of the Foudre. One owes in Secchi the installation of the first magnetic observatory in Italy. But it is especially for the invention of the météographe that he is known, a machine recording night and day the temperature curves, atmospheric pressure, precipitation, force of the wind and relative humidity of the air.

Rewards

Secchi is member, amongst other things, of the Royal Society, the Royal Astronomical Society and the Academy of Science. Two craters, the Secchi crater on the Moon and the Secchi crater over Mars bear its name, as well as a measuring device of the transparency of water, the Disque of Secchi.

Sources and references

Angelo Secchi, Catholic Encyclopedia

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