Stewart Sharpless

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Template:Short description Stewart Sharpless (March 29, 1926 – January 19, 2013)[1] was an American astronomer who carried out fundamental work on the structure of the Milky Way galaxy.

As a graduate student at Yerkes Observatory he worked under William Morgan with fellow graduate student Don Osterbrock.[2] He helped Harold Johnson and Morgan with calculations used to help define the UBV photometric system.[3] In 1952, Sharpless and Osterbrock published their observations that demonstrated the spiral structure of the Milky Way by estimating the distances to H II regions and young hot stars. [4] For a while Sharpless was at Mount Wilson Observatory where he worked on galaxy photography with Walter Baade and Edwin Hubble.[5]

In 1953 Sharpless joined the staff of the United States Naval Observatory Flagstaff Station.[5] Here he surveyed and cataloged H II regions of the Milky Way Galaxy using the images from the Palomar Sky Survey. From this work Sharpless published his catalog of H II regions in two editions, the first in 1953 with 142 nebula.[6] The second and final edition was published in 1959 with 313 nebulae[7] (see Sharpless catalog).

Stewart Sharpless was before his death a retired Professor Emeritus in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Rochester.

References

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  2. Shirley K. Cohen, Interview with Donald E. Osterbrock, Feb 10, 2003, California Institute of Technology Archives
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  6. Stewart Sharpless, A Catalogue of Emission Nebulae Near the Galactic Plane, Astrophysical Journal, vol. 118, p.362, 1953
  7. Stewart Sharpless, A Catalogue of H II Regions, Astrophysical Journal Supplement, vol. 4, p.257, 1959

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External links

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