Brian G. Marsden
| Brian Geoffrey Marsden | |
|---|---|
| Born |
August 5, 1937 Cambridge, England |
| Died | November 18, 2010 (aged 73) Burlington, Massachusetts |
| Alma mater |
New College, Oxford Yale University |
| Known for | Minor Planet Center |
Brian Geoffrey Marsden (5 August 1937 – 18 November 2010) was a British astronomer and the longtime director of the Minor Planet Center (MPC) at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (director emeritus from 2006 to 2010).
Marsden was educated at The Perse School in Cambridge, New College, Oxford (BA and MA) and Yale University (PhD). His thesis advisor was Dirk Brouwer.
Marsden specialized in celestial mechanics and astrometry, collecting data on the positions of asteroids and comets and computing their orbits, often from minimal observational information and providing their future positions on International Astronomical Union (IAU) circulars. In addition to serving as MPC director since 1978, he served as the director of the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams (CBAT) from 1968 to 1999. He was president of IAU Commission 6 (2000–2003) and Commission 20 (1976–1979).
Marsden helped recover once lost asteroids and lost comets. Some asteroid and comet discoveries of previous decades were "lost" because not enough observational data had been obtained at the time to determine a reliable enough orbit to know where to look for re-observation at future dates. Occasionally, a newly discovered object turns out to be a rediscovery of a previously lost object, which can be determined by calculating its orbit backwards into the past and matching calculated positions with the previously recorded positions of the lost object. In the case of comets this is especially tricky because of nongravitational forces that can affect their orbits (one of which is emission of jets of gas from the comet nucleus), but Marsden has specialized in calculating such nongravitational forces. Notably, he successfully predicted the 1992 return of the once-lost Comet Swift-Tuttle.
...
Wikipedia