James Edward Keeler
James Edward Keeler (
September 10 1857 –
August 12 1900) was an American
astronomer.
He worked at
Lick Observatory beginning in
1888 but was appointed director of
Allegheny Observatory in
1891. He returned to Lick Observatory as its director in
1898, but died not long after in
1900.
Along with George Hale he founded and edited the Astrophysical Journal, the major journal of astronomy in the world today.
He did a spectroscopic study of
Saturn's rings and proved that they could not be solid objects because they did not rotate at a uniform rate; rather, they had to consist of a swarm of small individual objects.
He won the
Henry Draper Medal in
1899.
He discovered two
asteroids, although the second was lost and only recovered about 100 years later.
In
1880, Allegheny Observatory director
Samuel Pierpont Langley, accompanied by Keeler and others, went on a scientific expedition to the summit of
Mount Whitney. The purpose of the expedition was to study how the
Sun's radiation was selectively absorbed by the
Earth's atmosphere, comparing the results at high altitude with those found at lower levels.
As a result of the expedition, the "
Keeler Needle" (14,240 ft.) near
Mount Whitney was named after James E. Keeler, and the "
Day Needle" (14,180 ft.) was named after another expedition participant, Professor
William Cathcart Day of
Johns Hopkins University. The Day Needle has now been renamed
Crooks Peak after
Hilda Crooks.
A
gap in Saturn's rings,
craters on
Mars and the
Moon, and the
asteroid 2261 Keeler are named in his honor.
Obituaries
*
ApJ 12(1900) 239*
MNRAS 61(1901) 197
