A German-born astronomer who discovered numerous deep sky objects and comets. After leaving his hometown in Saxony in 1837, he trained and worked as a lithographer in Copenhagen, Christiania (now Oslo), and Venice. In 1860 he went to work at Marseilles Observatory, in 1871 he joined Giovanni Schiaparelli at Brera Observatory in Milan, and in 1874 he went to Arcetri Observatory. Tempel discovered the Merope Nebula (NGC 1435) in the Pleiades in October 1859. Later he discovered many more nebulous objects: 156 NGC (New General Catalogue) entries were credited to him, of which at least 123 belong to real deep sky objects. He is also credited with 13 original comet discoveries and 5 independent codiscoveries, as well as 8 first rediscoveries of periodic comets; his original discoveries include 4 short-periodic comets (9P/Tempel 1, 10P/Tempel 2, 11D/Tempel-Swift, and the Leonid comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle).
Copyright © 2004 by Wiley-Blackwell. Wiley and the Wiley logo are registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries. Used here by license.
