Whipple was born on November 5, 1906, in Red Oak, Iowa, as the son of a farmer. An early bout with polio ended his ambition of being a professional tennis player. Whipple studied at Occidental College in Southern California, then majored in mathematics at the University of California at Los Angeles, graduating in 1927. Recollecting his path from mathematics to astronomy, Whipple stated in a 1978 autobiography that his "mathematics major veered [him] through physics and finally focused on astronomy where time, space, mathematics, and physics had a common meeting ground."
After taking a class in astronomy, he enlisted at the University of California, Berkeley where he obtained his PhD in Astronomy in 1931. While in graduate school, he helped map the orbit of the then newly discovered dwarf planetPluto. He joined Harvard College Observatory in 1931 and studied the trajectories of meteors, confirming that they originated within the solar system rather than from interstellar space. In 1933, he discovered the periodic comet36P/Whipple and the asteroid1252 Celestia. He also discovered or co-discovered five other non-periodic comets, the first of which was C/1932 P1 Peltier-Whipple, independently discovered by the famed amateur astronomer Leslie Peltier.
Research activities include imaging and spectroscopy of extragalactic, stellar, and planetary bodies, as well as gamma-ray and cosmic-ray astronomy.
History
In 1966, roadwork began on the current site with funding granted for the Smithsonian Mt. Hopkins Observatory. The Whipple 10-meter gamma-ray telescope was constructed in 1968.
Formerly known as "The Mount Hopkins Observatory," the observatory was renamed in late 1981 in honor of Fred Lawrence Whipple, noted planetary expert, space science pioneer, and director emeritus of SAO, under whose leadership the Arizona facility was established.
Equipment
Whipple observatory hosts the MMT Observatory, which is jointly run by SAO and the University of Arizona and houses a 6.5-meter telescope. The observatory also has 1.5- and 1.2-meter reflectors and a second 1.3-meter reflector named PAIRITEL (Peters Automated IR Imaging Telescope, ex-2MASS ). Also on site is the HATNet (Hungarian-made Automated Telescope) network and the new MEarth project.
Born in New York, New York, Whipple received a B.S. from Columbia University in 1933 and an LL.B. from John Marshall Law School, New Jersey (now Seton Hall University School of Law) in 1939. He was a Private practice from 1939 to 1949. He was an Acting United States Magistrate Judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey from 1949 to 1951. He was a Director, Law Enforcement, OPS in 1950. He was a Special assistant U.S. attorney of Department of Justice in 1951. He was an Executive director, Jersey City Housing Authority, New Jersey in 1953. He was a Director of public safety, Jersey City, New Jersey from 1953 to 1957. He was a Director, Department of Revenue and Finance, Jersey City, New Jersey in 1957. He was a County counsel, Hudson County, New Jersey from 1957 to 1958. He was a Deputy attorney general of New Jersey in 1958. He was a Prosecutor, Hudson County, New Jersey from 1958 to 1962. He was a judge on the Superior Court of New Jersey from 1963 to 1967.
Jin was instrumental in analyzing the most energetic segment of the dataset, particularly very-high-energy gamma rays collected by VERITAS, a ground-based gamma-ray observatory located at the FredLawrence Whipple Observatory in southern Arizona.
Captured using the 1.2m telescope at CfA’s FredLawrence Whipple Observatory on June 27, 2023, just over a month after SN 2023ixf’s progenitor star exploded, the image in this composite ...
Harvard & Smithsonian... The observations were gathered between 2016 and 2022 primarily from the FredLawrence Whipple Observatory, located in Arizona, as well as the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile ... More information ... DOI ... Citation ... ....
The finding, published April 5 on the pre-print server arXiv, identifies G 68-34 a double-lined M-dwarf eclipsing binary ... "We observed G 68-34 with the TRES spectrograph on the 1.5m telescope at the FredLawrence Whipple Observatory (FLWO) ... DOI ... arXiv.
Shortly thereafter, an international team examined AT2018hyz in the visible and ultraviolet wavelengths using the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae, the FredLawrence Whipple Observatory, and ...
... new paper, says that AT2018hyz was "unremarkable" in 2018 when he first studied it using visible light telescopes, including the 1.2-m telescope at the FredLawrence Whipple Observatory in Arizona.
The observations occurred over 14.5 years at the 1.2-meter telescope located at the FredLawrence Whipple Observatory (FLWO, USA), in collaboration with scientists at The Ohio State University (USA).
Victoria Advocate
06 Jan 2023
Victoria Advocate
06 Jan 2023