Philibert Jacques Melotte

Asteroids discovered: 1 [1]
676 Melitta 16 January 1909 MPC

Philibert Jacques Melotte (29 January 1880 – 30 March 1961) was a British astronomer whose parents emigrated from Belgium.[2]

In 1908 he discovered a moon of Jupiter, today known as Pasiphaë. It was simply designated "Jupiter VIII" and was not given its present name until 1975. The outer main-belt asteroid 676 Melitta, the only asteroid he discovered,[1] is named after the Attic form of the Greek Melissa, the bee, but its resemblance to the discoverer's name is not fortuitous.[3]

The conspicuous star cluster in the Coma Berenices constellation is commonly designated Mel 111 since it appeared in Melotte's 1915 catalogue of star clusters,[4] but not in Charles Messier's famous catalogue of deep sky objects or in the New General Catalogue since it was not proved to be a true cluster until 1938 by the astronomer R J Trumpler.[5]

Melotte was awarded the Jackson-Gwilt Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1909. A collection of his papers is held at Cambridge University Library.

  1. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference MPC-Discoverers was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Obituary was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference springer was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Melotte, P. J. "A Catalogue of Star Clusters shown on Franklin-Adams Chart Plates", MmRAS, 1915
  5. ^ The Coma Berenices star cluster (Melotte 111)