Charles Kowal
| Charles Thomas Kowal | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
November 8, 1940 Buffalo, New York, USA |
| Died | November 28, 2011 (aged 71) Cinebar, Washington, USA |
| Citizenship | United States |
| Fields | Astronomy |
| Institutions | Caltech's Hale Observatory, STScI, APL |
| Alma mater | University of Southern California |
| Known for | Discovery of outer Solar System objects |
Charles Thomas Kowal (November 8, 1940 – November 28, 2011) was an American astronomer known for his observations and discoveries in the Solar System. As a staff astronomer at Caltech's Mount Wilson and Palomar Mountain observatories between 1961 and 1984, he found the first of a new class of Solar System objects, the centaurs, discovered two moons of the planet Jupiter, and discovered or co-discovered a number of asteroids, comets and supernovae. He was awarded the James Craig Watson Medal for his contributions to astronomy in 1979.
In the 1960s, Kowal observed with the Palomar 48" Schmidt telescope, contributing observations to noted cosmologist Fritz Zwicky's six-volume Catalogue of Galaxies and of Clusters of Galaxies. Kowal also began to search for Type Ia supernovae in other galaxies, in an effort led by Zwicky to calibrate the magnitudes of these exploding stars so that they could be used as standard candles, reliable measures of the distance of their host galaxies (work which in the present has led to accurate measurements of the expansion of the universe). In the course of these Palomar supernovae surveys with the 48" Schmidt, Kowal personally discovered 81 supernovae, including SN 1972e.
In 1973, Caltech astronomers Eleanor Helin and Gene Shoemaker began an observing program to search out and track previously unknown near-Earth asteroid, the Planet-Crossing Asteroid Survey (PCAS), a photographic plate survey that began on the Palomar 18" Schmidt telescope. Although primarily employed by the supernova survey to observe on the 48" Schmidt, Kowal provided "crucial observations" of particularly faint asteroids for the PCAS program with the larger telescope. His asteroid discoveries and co-discoveries include the notable asteroids Aten asteroid 2340 Hathor; the Apollo asteroids 1981 Midas, 2063 Bacchus, 2102 Tantalus and (5660) 1974 MA; the Amor asteroids (4596) 1981 QB and (4688) 1980 WF; and the Trojan asteroids 2241 Alcathous and 2594 Acamas. PCAS later moved to the 48" Schmidt, and ran in total for nearly 25 years, until June 1995.
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