Bornprobably France, 1618
Diedprobably France, 1683
Voituret Anthelme was a French astronomer specializing in comets. Although he was a monk in a Catholic monastery, he spent much of his time studying stellar motions and searching for comets. Anthelme discovered several comets and investigated the cause of the brightness change of the variable star Mira. Using his own observations of comet C/1680 V1, he published Explication de la comète in 1681. Anthelme’s idea on cometary orbits was that one of the foci of an orbit is located far away from the Earth, so that their orbital eccentricity is extremely large. He argued that comets are made of transparent materials, contrary to the vortex hypothesis proposed by René Descartes .
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M. C. Festou, M. C., H. U. Keller, and H. A. Weaver (2004) “A Brief Conceptual History of Cometary Science.” In Comets II, edited by Richard P. Binzel, Michael C. Festou, and H. U. Keller. p. 3. Tucson, Arizona: University of Arizona Press.
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Sakurai, K. (2014). Anthelme, Voituret. In: Hockey, T., et al. Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9917-7_57
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