Edison Pettit
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Edison Pettit (September 22 1889 – May 6 1962) was an American astronomer.
He was born in Peru, Nebraska. He taught astronomy at Washburn College in Topeka, Kansas from 1914 to 1918. He married Hannah Steele, who was an assistant at Yerkes Observatory, and received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1920.
Shortly after he became a staff member at Mount Wilson Observatory. He initially specialized in solar astronomy and built his own thermocouples. He also made visual observations of Mars and Jupiter. Even after his retirement he continued to make spectrographs for various observatories in the machine shop in his home.
Craters on the Moon and on Mars are named after him.
Obituary
- PASP 74 (1962) 495 (http://adsabs.harvard.edu//full/seri/PASP./0074//0000495.000.html)