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Horace Parnell Tuttle (March 17, 1837 – August 16, 1923) was an American
astronomer An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. Astronomers observe astronomical objects, such as stars, planets, natural satellite, moons, comets and galaxy, galax ...
, an
American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...
veteran and brother of astronomer Charles Wesley Tuttle (November 1, 1829 – July 17, 1881).


Biography


Early life

H. P. Tuttle was born at Newfield, Maine. His parents were Moses Tuttle and Mary Merrow. In 1845 Mary Merrow died, and four years later Moses Tuttle remarried and moved to
Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is a suburb in the Greater Boston metropolitan area, located directly across the Charles River from Boston. The city's population as of the 2020 United States census, ...
. Charles Wesley Tuttle was an amateur astronomer who constructed his own telescope, and on a visit to the Harvard Observatory so impressed William Cranch Bond that by 1850 he was hired as an assistant observer. At Harvard Charles Wesley first proposed the existence of the interior "dusky ring" of Saturn. In 1853 he discovered a comet (C/1853 E1 Secchi), with independent discovery credited to Father Secchi,
Rome Rome (Italian language, Italian and , ) is the capital city and most populated (municipality) of Italy. It is also the administrative centre of the Lazio Regions of Italy, region and of the Metropolitan City of Rome. A special named with 2, ...
. The following year Charles Wesley was forced to give up his astronomical career because of failing eyesight. He entered
Harvard Law School Harvard Law School (HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, Harvard Law School is the oldest law school in continuous operation in the United ...
and became U. S. Commissioner. Charles wrote many articles for the New England Historic Genealogy Society. Charles was soon replaced at Harvard by his younger brother Horace, who joined Truman Henry Safford, Sidney Coolidge, and
Asaph Hall Asaph Hall III (October 15, 1829 – November 22, 1907) was an American astronomer who is best known for having discovered the two moons of Mars, Deimos and Phobos, in 1877. He determined the orbits of satellites of other planets and of doubl ...
as observatory assistants. Horace became attached to a four-inch Merz comet seeker, which he placed on the balconies of the 15-inch refractor, spending many nights in search of new comets. Horace Tuttle discovered or co-discovered numerous
comet A comet is an icy, small Solar System body that warms and begins to release gases when passing close to the Sun, a process called outgassing. This produces an extended, gravitationally unbound atmosphere or Coma (cometary), coma surrounding ...
s, including 55P/Tempel-Tuttle (parent body of the
Leonid Leonid ( ; ; ) is a Slavic version of the given name Leonidas. The French version is Leonide. People with the name include: * Leonid Agutin (born 1968), Russian pop musician and songwriter * Leonid Andreyev (1871–1919), Russian playwright ...
meteor shower A meteor shower is a celestial event in which a number of meteors are observed to radiate, or originate, from one point in the night sky. These meteors are caused by streams of cosmic debris called meteoroids entering Earth's atmosphere at ext ...
, discovered by Tuttle January 6, 1866), and
109P/Swift-Tuttle 1 (one, unit, unity) is a number, numeral, and glyph. It is the first and smallest positive integer of the infinite sequence of natural numbers. This fundamental property has led to its unique uses in other fields, ranging from science to sp ...
(parent body of the Perseid meteor shower, disc. July 19, 1862), the "Great Comet of 1860", C/1860 III (disc. June 22, 1860), C/1859 G1 Tempel (disc April 24, 1859). Other periodic comets that bear his name are 8P/Tuttle (parent comet of the Ursid meteor shower; disc. January 5, 1858 "rather faint") and 41P/Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresak (disc. May 3, 1858 in Leo Minor "very faint"), C/1861 Y1 Tuttle, (disc. December 19, 1862), C/1859 G1 Tempel (disc. April 28, 1859). The
asteroid An asteroid is a minor planet—an object larger than a meteoroid that is neither a planet nor an identified comet—that orbits within the Solar System#Inner Solar System, inner Solar System or is co-orbital with Jupiter (Trojan asteroids). As ...
5036 Tuttle was named in his honor. In 1859 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 1801 ...
of the
French Academy of Sciences The French Academy of Sciences (, ) is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French Scientific method, scientific research. It was at the forefron ...
for the discovery of comets 1858I, 1858III, and 1858VII. Tuttle is credited with the discovery of galaxies NGC 2655 in Camelopardalis, and NGC 6643 in Draco. He dabbled in applications of the new
Morse Code Morse code is a telecommunications method which Character encoding, encodes Written language, text characters as standardized sequences of two different signal durations, called ''dots'' and ''dashes'', or ''dits'' and ''dahs''. Morse code i ...
, and invented a method of signaling long distances by "light flashes". He is credited with inventing a new method for the insertion of rifled steel cores into brass or iron cannon. His observing log books from this period are preserved at the library of the
U.S. Naval Observatory The United States Naval Observatory (USNO) is a scientific and military facility that produces geopositioning, navigation and timekeeping data for the United States Navy and the United States Department of Defense. Established in 1830 as the ...
.


War service

With the outbreak of the
American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...
, Horace Tuttle enlisted in the 44th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry and served at New Bern, North Carolina. It would be through the intervention of former Harvard president
Edward Everett Edward Everett (April 11, 1794 – January 15, 1865) was an American politician, Unitarian pastor, educator, diplomat, and orator from Massachusetts. Everett, as a Whig, served as U.S. representative, U.S. senator, the 15th governor of Mas ...
that Tuttle was given a commission in the U. S. Navy and as paymaster. He served on a number of vessels, including the monitor , where he participated in the blockade of Charleston Harbor and the capture of the blockade runner ''Deer''. Tuttle was appointed acting assistant paymaster, February 17, 1863, assistant paymaster, July 2, 1864, and paymaster, May 4, 1866. He continued to make astronomical observations during the war, reporting on the 1864 appearance of Comet Tempel 1864 II from the deck of the ''Catskill''. After the war Tuttle was sent to South America, Europe, and the Pacific, making scientific observations on Naval survey vessels.


Later life

The war era had taken Tuttle out of cometseeking for three and a half years. His discovery of comet 1866 I at the Naval Observatory on January 5, 1866, must have brought him back to happier times. This was Comet Tempel-Tuttle, first seen by the French astronomer more than two weeks earlier. The Washington Star newspaper reported the event on page two: This was only the second comet ever discovered at the Naval Observatory. The first was James Ferguson's independent discovery of Comet Tempel 1859, which was also an independent discovery of H. P. Tuttle. In October, 1866 he was assigned to the ''Onward'', South Atlantic Station. During the next four years he served on the monitors ''Guard'' and ''Terror''. On October 23, 1871, Tuttle independently recovered periodic comet 8/P1871 T1 Tuttle at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C. In 1871 Tuttle served under Commodore
George Dewey George Dewey (December 26, 1837January 16, 1917) was Admiral of the Navy, the only person in United States history to have attained that rank. He is best known for his victory at the Battle of Manila Bay during the Spanish–American War, wi ...
as astronomer on the survey of the coast of lower California. In 1872 he was assigned to the oceanographic survey ship ''Lackawanna'' at Hong Kong. On January 26, 1875, Tuttle and E. S. Holden recovered periodic comet 2P/Encke from the Naval Observatory. Tuttle was in Washington, DC attending a Naval court martial, his own in fact. He was dismissed from the Navy March 3, 1875. Tuttle's brother Francis served in the Navy as Mate and Acting Ensign from 1863 to 1870. As Captain of the US Revenue Cutter ''Bear'', Francis Tuttle was ordered to the rescue of 14 ships of whalers trapped in ice off Point Barrow, Alaska, in 1897. In 1875 Tuttle was appointed to the Interior Department's geographic and geological survey of the Black Hills of Dakota to survey the state borders and measure heights of geological features. He spent the next five years on border surveys of Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado and Utah, for the General Land Office. In 1887 Tuttle had a 6.5-inch broken-back reflecting comet seeker made for him by
John Brashear John Alfred Brashear (November 24, 1840 – April 8, 1920) was an American astronomer and instrument builder. Life and work Brashear was born in Brownsville, Pennsylvania, a town located 35 miles (56 km) south of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, ...
. It was installed "on the tin roof of the Naval Observatory." A similar refractor cometseeker by Brashear is in the Naval Observatory collection. Here he made his last comet discovery, a recovery of Comet 1888V Barnard. Tuttle lived in the
Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...
, area from about 1884 until his death from "pulmonary edema" in 1923. In his final years he was feeble and blind from a fall in November, 1921. His gravesite is unmarked, and its location in Oakwood Cemetery, Falls Church, is unknown.


Gallery

File:HPtuttle-young.jpg, H. P. Tuttle, c. 1862 File:HPTuttle-1866.jpg, H. P. Tuttle, c. 1866 File:HPtuttle-old.jpg, H. P. Tuttle, 1888 (USNO)


References


Further reading

* Henry Fritz-Gilbert Waters, ''The New England historical and genealogical register'', New England Historic Genealogical Society, Vol. 153 * Yeomans, Donald K., ''Comets: A Chronology'', John Wiley & Sons, 1991 * Kronk, Gary, ''Cometography: A Catalog of Comets'', Cambridge University Press, 2003 * National Archives, official pension file of Horace P. Tuttle. * Washington Evening Star, Obituary, Aug. 20, 1923 * IAU Minor Planet Center, ''IAU Minor Planet Ephemeris Service''


External links


Image of 5036 Tuttle from SDSS survey taken on 19SEP2001
**Minor planet 5036 Tuttle (aka 1991 US2, 1965 DC, 1971 FY, 1977 KA2, 1982 KA1, 1985 UB2, 1988 KK1 or 1990 ST12), 2.73au from Earth on 19SEP2001. It was discovered by Ueda and Kaneda October, 1991. It is currently (11/2009) distant 3.1 A.U., visual magnitude of 16.8 It has a rotation period of 3.8 hours and a period of 5.57 years.
H. Tuttle
@
Astrophysics Data System The SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) is a digital library portal for researchers on astronomy and physics, operated for NASA by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. ADS maintains three bibliographic collections containing over 15 ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tuttle, Horace Parnell 1837 births 1923 deaths People from Newfield, Maine American astronomers Discoverers of asteroids Discoverers of comets Union army soldiers Union Navy officers Recipients of the Lalande Prize