Angelo Secchi
JUN 29, 2015
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.030996
It’s the birthday of Angelo Secchi, who was born in 1818 in Reggio Emilia, Italy. Secchi joined the Jesuit Order at the age of 16 and became a priest, teacher and astronomer. As the director of the order’s Roman College Observatory, he undertook the spectroscopic study of stars, which led him to conclude that stars come in a small number of distinct types. Among Secchi’s discoveries are solar spicules, which are short-lived jets of plasma that squirt from the Sun’s chromosphere and travel at speeds of around 20 km/s.
Date in History: 29 June 1818
© 2015 American Institute of Physics
