FRIEDRICH WILHELM

See also:

• AUGUST (originally Sextilis)

AUGUST

See also:

• FRIEDRICH WILHELM AUGUST ARGELANDER (1799-1875)

ARGELANDER (1799-1875)  , German astronomer, 'was born at Memel on the 22nd of March 1799 . He studied at the university of Konigsberg, and was attracted to astronomy by F . W . Bessel, whose assistant he became (October 1, 1820) . His treatise on the path of the great comet of 1811 appeared in 1822; he was, in 1823, entrusted with the direction of the observatory at Abo; and he exchanged it for a similar charge at Helsingfors in 1832 . His admirable investigation of the sun's motion in space was published in 1837; and in the same year he was appointed professor of astronomy in the university of Bonn, where he died on the 17th of February 1875 . He also published Observations .Astrono-micae• Alkae Factae (3 vols., 183o-1832); DLX Stellarum Fixarum Positiones Mediae (1835); and the first seven volumes of Astronomische Beobachtungen auf der Sternwarte zu Bonn (1846-1869) , containing his observations of northern and southern star-zones, and his great Durchmusterung (vols. iii.-v., 1859-1862) of 324,198 stars, from the north pole to -2-° Dec . The corresponding atlas was issued in 1863 . His observations (begun in 1838) and discussions of variable stars were embodied in vol. vii. of the same series . See E . Schonfeld in Vierteljahrsschrift der Astronomischen Gesellschaft, x. pp . 150-178 .