Lewis Boss
Encyclopedia
Life
He was born in ProvidenceProvidence, Rhode Island
Providence is the capital and most populous city of Rhode Island and was one of the first cities established in the United States. Located in Providence County, it is the third largest city in the New England region...
, Rhode Island
Rhode Island
The state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, more commonly referred to as Rhode Island , is a state in the New England region of the United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area...
and attended secondary school at the Lapham Institute
Lapham Institute
The Smithville Seminary was a Freewill Baptist institution established in 1839 on what is now Institute Lane in Smithville-North Scituate, Rhode Island. Renamed the Lapham Institute in 1863, it closed in 1876. The site was then used as the campus of the Pentecostal Collegiate Institute and later...
in North Scituate
Scituate, Rhode Island
Scituate is a town in Providence County, Rhode Island, United States. The population was 10,329 at the 2010 census.-History:Scituate was first settled in 1710 by emigrants from Scituate, Massachusetts...
and the New Hampton Institution in New Hampshire
New Hampshire
New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...
. In 1870 he graduated from Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College is a private, Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. The institution comprises a liberal arts college, Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences...
, then went to work as a clerk for the U.S. Government. He served as an assistant astronomer for a government expedition to survey
Surveying
See Also: Public Land Survey SystemSurveying or land surveying is the technique, profession, and science of accurately determining the terrestrial or three-dimensional position of points and the distances and angles between them...
the U.S
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
-Canadian
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
border. In 1876 he became the directory of the Dudley Observatory
Dudley Observatory
Dudley Observatory is an astronomical observatory located in Schenectady, New York, United States. Along with Albany College of Pharmacy, Albany Law School, Albany Medical College, the Graduate College of Union University, and Union College, it is one of the constituent entities of Union...
in Schenectady, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
.
He became editor of the Astronomical Journal
Astronomical Journal
The Astronomical Journal is a peer-reviewed monthly scientific journal owned by the American Astronomical Society and currently published by Institute of Physics Publishing. It is one of the premier journals for astronomy in the world...
in 1909, but responsibility passed to his son, Benjamin Boss
Benjamin Boss
Benjamin Boss was anAmerican astronomer.He was born to Lewis Boss and Helen M. Boss. After attending The Albany Academy, he graduated from Harvard University in 1901 and worked at Dudley Observatory until 1905. Following a year at the U. S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., he became director...
, upon his death in 1912. Benjamin continued to edit the journal until 1941.
Lewis Boss is noted for his work in cataloguing the locations and proper motion
Proper motion
The proper motion of a star is its angular change in position over time as seen from the center of mass of the solar system. It is measured in seconds of arc per year, arcsec/yr, where 3600 arcseconds equal one degree. This contrasts with radial velocity, which is the time rate of change in...
s of stars. He also led an expedition to Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
in 1882 to observe the transit
Astronomical transit
The term transit or astronomical transit has three meanings in astronomy:* A transit is the astronomical event that occurs when one celestial body appears to move across the face of another celestial body, hiding a small part of it, as seen by an observer at some particular vantage point...
of Venus
Venus
Venus is the second planet from the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days. The planet is named after Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty. After the Moon, it is the brightest natural object in the night sky, reaching an apparent magnitude of −4.6, bright enough to cast shadows...
, and also catalogued information concerning comet
Comet
A comet is an icy small Solar System body that, when close enough to the Sun, displays a visible coma and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena are both due to the effects of solar radiation and the solar wind upon the nucleus of the comet...
ary orbit
Orbit
In physics, an orbit is the gravitationally curved path of an object around a point in space, for example the orbit of a planet around the center of a star system, such as the Solar System...
s.
In 1910, he published Preliminary General Catalogue of 6188 Stars for the Epoch 1900, a compilation of the proper motions of stars. This catalog was later expanded after his death by his son Benjamin Boss
Benjamin Boss
Benjamin Boss was anAmerican astronomer.He was born to Lewis Boss and Helen M. Boss. After attending The Albany Academy, he graduated from Harvard University in 1901 and worked at Dudley Observatory until 1905. Following a year at the U. S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., he became director...
. His most significant discovery was the calculation of the convergent point of the Hyades
Hyades (star cluster)
The Hyades is the nearest open cluster to the Solar System and one of the best-studied of all star clusters. The Hipparcos satellite, the Hubble Space Telescope, and infrared color-magnitude diagram fitting have been used to establish a distance to the cluster's center of ~153 ly...
star cluster
Star cluster
Star clusters or star clouds are groups of stars. Two types of star clusters can be distinguished: globular clusters are tight groups of hundreds of thousands of very old stars which are gravitationally bound, while open clusters, more loosely clustered groups of stars, generally contain less than...
.
Boss was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society
Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society
-History:In the early years, more than one medal was often awarded in a year, but by 1833 only one medal was being awarded per year. This caused a problem when Neptune was discovered in 1846, because many felt an award should jointly be made to John Couch Adams and Urbain Le Verrier...
in 1905.
The crater Boss
Boss (crater)
Boss is a lunar impact crater that is located along the northeast rim of the Moon's near side. Due to its location, the crater is viewed from the side by observers on the Earth, and its visibility is subject to libration effects....
on the Moon
Moon
The Moon is Earth's only known natural satellite,There are a number of near-Earth asteroids including 3753 Cruithne that are co-orbital with Earth: their orbits bring them close to Earth for periods of time but then alter in the long term . These are quasi-satellites and not true moons. For more...
is named after him.
Sources
- Much of this article was based on the Dudley Observatory history of Lewis Boss.
External links
- Preliminary General Catalogue of 6188 Stars for the Epoch 1900