Heinrich Louis d'Arrest

"d'Arrest" redirects here. For the lunar crater, see d'Arrest (crater).

Heinrich Louis d'Arrest
Heinrich Louis d'Arrest
Born	13 July 1822 Berlin
Died	14 June 1875(1875-06-14) (aged 52) Copenhagen
Nationality	German
Known for	Neptune
Notable awards	Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society

Heinrich Louis d'Arrest (13 July 1822 – 14 June 1875; German pronunciation: [daˈʁɛ] ) was a German astronomer, born in Berlin. His name is sometimes given as Heinrich Ludwig d'Arrest.

Asteroids discovered: 1

76 Freia

21 October 1862

While still a student at the University of Berlin, d'Arrest was party to Johann Gottfried Galle's search for Neptune. On 23 September 1846, he suggested that a recently drawn chart of the sky, in the region of Urbain Le Verrier's predicted location, could be compared with the current sky to seek the displacement characteristic of a planet, as opposed to a stationary star. Neptune was discovered that very night.

D'Arrest's later work at the Leipzig Observatory led him, in 1851, to the discovery of the comet named for him (formally designated 6P/d'Arrest). He also studied asteroids (he discovered 76 Freia) and nebulae.

In 1864 D'Arrest made an unsuccessful search for Martian satellites, and posited an upper limit of 70 minutes of arc as the distance from Mars within which a moon should be sought.

He won the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1875.

He died in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The crater D'Arrest on the Moon is named after him, as well as a crater on the Martian satellite Phobos and the asteroid 9133 d'Arrest.

External links

• Awarding of RAS gold medal: MNRAS 35 (1875) 265

Obituaries

• AN 86 (1875) 63/64 (one paragraph, in German)
• MNRAS 36 (1876) 155

Further reading

• Dieke, Sally (1970). "Heinrich Louis D' Arrest". Dictionary of Scientific Biography. 1. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. pp. 295–296. ISBN 0684101149.