Robert T. A. Innes

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Robert Thorburn Ayton Innes (November 10, 1861 Edinburgh – March 13, 1933) was a Scottish-South African astronomer best known for discovering Proxima Centauri in 1915, and numerous binary stars. He was also the first astronomer to have seen the Great January Comet of 1910, on January 12. He was the founding director of a meteorological station, which he converted to an astronomical observatory and renamed to Union Observatory. He was the first Union Astronomer.

A self-taught astronomer, he went to Australia at an early age and made his living as a wine merchant in Sydney, where, using a small telescope, he discovered several double stars new to astronomy. He also published some papers on perturbations in Mars' and Venus' orbits.

Despite having had no formal training in astronomy, he was invited to the Cape by Sir David Gill in 1894 and appointed to the Cape observatory in 1896. In 1903 he took up the position of Director of the new Meteorological Observatory in Johannesburg. He acquired the observatory's first telescope, a 9-inch refractor, in 1906, and was appointed first Union Astronomer in 1912. The University of Leyden awarded him a honoris causa doctorate in 1923. He retired in 1927.

Innes tirelessly campaigned for foreign investment in South Africa's astronomy infrastructure - he believed that its clear skies were ideally suited for astronomical observation. He discovered some 1600 new pairs of double stars, had a great interest in stellar proper motions and devoted much time to the study of Jupiter's satellites.

[edit] Honors

The following features have been named for him:

• Innes crater on the Moon.
• The asteroid 1658 Innes.