Heinrich wilhelm olbers biography graphic organizer for kids

In , while attending to a sick fellow student, he devised a method of calculating cometary orbits which made an epoch in the treatment of the subject. It was the first satisfactory method of calculating cometary orbits. After his graduation in , he began practicing medicine in Bremen. At night he dedicated his time to astronomical observation, making the upper story of his home into an observatory.

In , Olbers was one of 24 astronomers invited to participate in the group known as the "celestial police", dedicated to finding new planets in the solar system. On 28 March , Olbers discovered and named the asteroid Pallas. Five years later, on 29 March , he discovered the asteroid Vesta , which he allowed Carl Friedrich Gauss to name.

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As the word "asteroid" was not yet coined, the literature of the time referred to these minor planets as planets in their own right. He proposed that the asteroid belt , where these objects lay, was the remnants of a planet that had been destroyed. The current view of most scientists is that tidal effects from the planet Jupiter disrupted the planet-formation process in the asteroid belt.

Olbers' paradox, described by him in and then reformulated in , states that the darkness of the night sky conflicts with the supposition of an infinite and eternal static universe.