Oswald Thomas (July 27, 1882 - February 7, 1963)

Oswald Thomas was born in Kronstadt (Siebenbuergen; now Brasov, Romania) on July 27, 1882. After getting school educatiomn in Kronstadt, he studied astronomy, math and physics in Heidelberg and Jena, and returned to Kronstadt in 1906 as a professional astronomer. He founded the Astronomisches Buero (Astronomical Bureau) in Kronstadt in 1907. He came to Vienna in 1913 and took the Astronomical Bureau with him, became Director of the Urania Observatory in Vienna 1915-1922, founded the "Österreichischer Astronomischer Verein" in 1924, and set up the Planetarium in the Vienna Prater area in 1927. He died in Bonn, Germany on February 7, 1963.

Oswald Thomas is commemorated by the Oswald-Thomas-Platz in Vienna, now the address of the Vienna Zeiss Planetarium.

In his 1934 book, Astronomie (Thomas 1934), he identified the missing Messier object M48 with NGC 2548, an identification which is now generally recognized, after T.F. Morris of RASC independently repeated it in 1959. Several historians have confused this identification of M48 with a presumed one of equally missing M47, but for this object, he has NGC 2478, the NGC number for Messier's wrong position, going back to John Herschel. The relavant lines in his book read (translated from German): 

M-No.  RA and Dec  NGC-No. Constellation  Object
        (1900.0)


 .. 
 47     (7.50-15)   2478   Ship Argo      Cluster
 48     (8.09-06)   2548   Hydra          Open Cluster
 ..

  • Brief data on Oswald Thomas from Project AEIOU
  • Oswald Thomas: Atlas der Sternbilder (1945) - Felice Stoppa's Atlas Coelestis

    References


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