Seth Barnes Nicholson - Awards and honors

Astronomer, born in Springfield, Illinois, USA. He studied at Drake University, IA, and the University of California, then joined the staff of the Mt Wilson Observatory (1915–57). He is remembered for his discovery of the 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th satellites of Jupiter.

Asteroids discovered: 2

878 Mildred	September 6, 1916
1647 Menelaus	June 23, 1957

Seth Barnes Nicholson (November 12, 1891 – July 2, 1963) was an American astronomer.

Nicholson was born in Springfield, Illinois and was raised in rural Illinois.

In 1914, at the University of California's Lick Observatory, while observing the recently-discovered Jupiter moon Pasiphaë, he discovered a new one: Sinope, whose orbit he computed for his Ph.D.

He spent his entire career at Mount Wilson Observatory, where he discovered three more Jovian moons: Lysithea and Carme in 1938 and Ananke in 1951, as well as a Trojan asteroid 1647 Menelaus, and computed orbits of several comets and of Pluto.

Sinope, Lysithea, Carme and Ananke were simply designated as "Jupiter IX", "Jupiter X", "Jupiter XI" and "Jupiter XII".

In the early 1920s, he and Edison Pettit made the first systematic infrared observations of celestial objects.

Awards and honors

Awarded the Bruce Medal (1963) The Asteroid 1831 Nicholson, Nicholson crater on the Moon, Nicholson crater on Mars, and Nicholson Regio on Ganymede were named after him.