Ernst Wilhelm Leberecht Tempel (4 December 1821 – 16 March 1889), normally known as Wilhelm Tempel, was a German
astronomer
An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses their studies on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. They observe astronomical objects such as stars, planets, moons, comets and galaxies – in either ...
who worked in
Marseille
Marseille ( , , ; also spelled in English as Marseilles; oc, Marselha ) is the prefecture of the French department of Bouches-du-Rhône and capital of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. Situated in the camargue region of southern Fra ...
until the outbreak of the
Franco-Prussian War in 1870, then later moved to Italy.
Tempel was born at
Niedercunnersdorf,
Saxony
Saxony (german: Sachsen ; Upper Saxon German, Upper Saxon: ''Saggsn''; hsb, Sakska), officially the Free State of Saxony (german: Freistaat Sachsen, links=no ; Upper Saxon: ''Freischdaad Saggsn''; hsb, Swobodny stat Sakska, links=no), is a ...
. He was a prolific discoverer of
comet
A comet is an icy, small Solar System body that, when passing close to the Sun, warms and begins to release gases, a process that is called outgassing. This produces a visible atmosphere or coma, and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena ...
s, discovering or co-discovering 21 in all, including Comet
55P/Tempel-Tuttle, now known to be the parent body of the
Leonid
Leonid (russian: Леонид ; uk, Леонід ; be, Леанід, Ljeaníd ) is a Slavic version of the given name Leonidas. The French version is Leonide.
People with the name include:
*Leonid Andreyev (1871–1919), Russian playwright a ...
meteor shower, and
9P/Tempel
Tempel 1 (official designation: 9P/Tempel) is a periodic Jupiter-family comet discovered by Wilhelm Tempel in 1867. It completes an orbit of the Sun every 5.5 years. Tempel 1 was the target of the ''Deep Impact'' space mission, which photogra ...
, the target of the
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research.
NASA was established in 1958, succeedin ...
probe ''
Deep Impact'' in 2005. Other periodic comets that bear his name include
10P/Tempel and
11P/Tempel-Swift-LINEAR.
In 1861, he was awarded the
Lalande Prize
The Lalande Prize (French: ''Prix Lalande'' also known as Lalande Medal) was an award for scientific advances in astronomy, given from 1802 until 1970 by the French Academy of Sciences.
The prize was endowed by astronomer Jérôme Lalande in 180 ...
. He won the
Prix Valz for the year 1880.
The
main-belt
The asteroid belt is a torus-shaped region in the Solar System, located roughly between the orbits of the planets Jupiter and Mars. It contains a great many solid, irregularly shaped bodies, of many sizes, but much smaller than planets, called ...
asteroid
3808 Tempel and the lunar crater ''
Tempel
Tempel (German or Dutch: ''temple'') may refer to:
__NOTOC__ Surname
*Wilhelm Tempel (1821–1889), German astronomer
*Russel Tempel, American politician
Nekpur Galla Mandi, Near Muni Mandir, Bareilly Uttar Pradesh 243001
Synagogues
* Tempel Syna ...
'' are named after him.
References
External links
*
*
W. Tempel@
Astrophysics Data System
The SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) is an online database of over 16 million astronomy and physics papers from both peer reviewed and non-peer reviewed sources. Abstracts are available free online for almost all articles, and full scanned ...
1821 births
1889 deaths
Discoverers of asteroids
Discoverers of comets
*
19th-century German astronomers
People from Görlitz (district)
Recipients of the Lalande Prize
Scientists from Saxony
{{Germany-astronomer-stub