Auwers, Arthur Von

Arthur von Auwers, in full Georg Friedrich Julius Arthur von Auwers, (born September 12, 1838, Göttingen, Hanover [Germany]—died January 24, 1915, Berlin, Germany), German astronomer known for his star catalogs.

After receiving a Ph.D. in astronomy (1862) from the University of Königsberg, Auwers joined the Gotha Observatory. He became astronomer (1866) at the Academy of Science in Berlin and from 1878 served as its permanent secretary. From 1881 to 1889 Auwers was president of the Astronomical Society. He also was elected to the French Académie des Sciences.

Auwers’s observations and calculations allowed him to develop extremely accurate star catalogs. As part of this process, Auwers researched solar and stellar parallaxes, making a new reduction of James Bradley’s observations and measurements of star distances. In addition, Auwers is remembered for his observations of double stars and particularly for accurately computing the orbits of the companion stars of Sirius and Procyon before improved telescopes made it possible to observe them.