BornLisbon, New Hampshire, USA, 29 December 1854
DiedNorwell, Massachusetts, USA, 5 June 1931
Solon Bailey, a prominent American astronomer in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was known primarily for his discovery and study of variable stars in globular clusters, now known as RR Lyrae stars, and for his extensive long-exposure photographic surveys of southern skies and photometric catalog of southern stars.
After receiving an M.A. from Boston University, in 1884, and teaching at Tilton Academy for a short period, Bailey entered graduate studies at the Harvard College Observatory, where he earned a second M.A. in 1888.
In 1889, Edward Pickering , the Harvard College Observatory director, sent Bailey to survey the Andes Mountains for possible sites for a southern extension of the Harvard College Observatory. After several arduous years of travel up and down the Andes chain, Bailey recommended a site near Arequipa, Peru, as the best of several possible sites for an...
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Selected References
Bailey, Solon Irving (1895). “A Catalog of 7922 Southern Stars Observed with the Meridian Photometer during the Years 1889–91.” Annals of the Astronomical Observatory of Harvard College 34.
— (1931).The History and Work of Harvard Observatory, 1839 to 1927. Harvard Observatory Monographs, no. 4. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Cannon, Annie J. (1934). “Biographical Memoir of Solon Irving Bailey.” Biographical Memoirs, National Academy of Sciences 15: 193–203.
Jones, Bessie Zaban and Lyle Gifford Boyd (1971). The Harvard College Observatory: The First Four Directorships, 1839–1919. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, pp. 287–324, 350–356, 379, 444.
Smith, Horace A. (2000). “Bailey, Shapley, and Variable Stars in Globular Clusters.” Journal for the History of Astronomy 31: 185–201.
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McGown, R.D. (2014). Bailey, Solon Irving. In: Hockey, T., et al. Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9917-7_96
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