Edward Emerson Barnard was an American astronomer. He is best known for his discovery of Barnard's star in 1916, which is named in his honor. He was born in Nashville, Tennessee, to Reuben Barnard and Elizabeth Jane Barnard, and had one brother. His father died before his birth, so he grew up in an impoverished family and did not receive much formal education. He later developed an interest in astronomy, and in 1876 he purchased a 5-inch refractor telescope. In 1881 he discovered his first comet, however he failed to announce his discovery. He found his second comet later the same year and a third in 1882. During the 1880s, a wealthy patron of astronomy in Rochester, New York, awarded $200 each time a new comet was found so that Barnard soon earned enough to build a “comet house” for his bride. His discoveries and brilliance as an observer drew the attention of other amateur astronomers in Nashville who raised enough money for Barnard to attend Vanderbilt University.
In 1892 he made observations of a nova and was the first to notice the gaseous emissions, proposing that it was a stellar explosion. The same year he also discovered Amalthea, the fifth moon of Jupiter. He was the first to discover a new moon of Jupiter since Galileo Galilei in 1609. This was the last satellite discovered by visual observation. In 1895 he joined the University of Chicago as professor of astronomy. There he was able to use the 40-inch telescope at Yerkes Observatory. On May 29, 1897, Barnard narrowly escaped death when, just hours after he had left the observatory’s dome, the 37-ton elevating floor, used to lift observers to the level of the telescope’s eyepiece, collapsed after a supporting cable broke. Much of his work during this period was taking photographs of the Milky Way. Together with Max Wolf, he discovered that certain dark regions of the galaxy were actually clouds of gas and dust that obscured the more distant stars in the background. Edward Barnard discovered Barnard's Star in 1916 and that it had a very large proper motion, relative to other stars. This is the second nearest star system to the Sun, second only to the Alpha Centauri system. He was also a pioneering astrophotographer. He died on February 6, 1923 in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, and was buried in Nashville. After his death, his exceptional collection of photographs was published as Photographic Atlas of Selected Regions of the Milky Way. Barnard was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1897, and then in 1917 was awarded the Bruce Medal. His life's work included nearly four thousand photographs and 840 separate addresses and articles. He is thought of as one of the greatest observational astronomers of his time.
Works Cited
Kenneth Glyn Jones. Messier's Nebulae and Star Clusters. Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Tenn, Joe. "Edward Emerson Barnard". The Bruce Medalists. March 10 2006. March 4 2008.
