Heber Doust Curtis was an American astronomer. He participated in 11 expeditions for the study of solar eclipses.
Biography
He was born on June 27, 1872, the elder son of Orson Blair Curtis and Sarah Eliza Doust. He studied at the University of Michigan and at the University of Virginia, earning a degree in astronomy from the latter. From 1902 to 1920 Curtis worked at Lick Observatory, continuing the survey of nebulae initiated by Keeler. In 1912 he was elected president of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. In 1918 he observed Messier 87 and was the first to notice the polar jet which he described as a "curious straight ray... apparently connected with the nucleus by a thin line of matter." In 1920 he was appointed director of the Allegheny Observatory. In the same year he participated in the Great Debate with Harlow Shapley on the nature of nebulae and galaxies, and the size of the universe. Curtis advocated the now-accepted view that other galaxies apart from the Milky Way existed. Curtis also invented a type of film plate comparator in about 1925, allowing 2 plates, each 8×10 in, to be compared using a set of prisms and placing the plates on stacked and aligned stages rather than next to one another as was the norm, this allowed the body of the device to measure just 60×51 cm. This device is packed in crates and resided at UCO Lick Observatory as of Aug 2011. His article describing the device appears in the Publications of the Allegheny Observatory, vol. VIII, no. 2. In 1930 Curtis was appointed director of the University of Michigan observatories, but the shortage of funds following the Great Depression prevented the construction of a large reflector he had designed for the university at Ann Arbor. He contributed to develop the McMath–Hulbert private observatory at Lake Angelus. He died on January 9, 1942.
Legacy
The Heber Doust Curtis Memorial Telescope at the Portage Lake Observatory was dedicated in 1950 in Curtis' memory. It no longer operates, but remains as a memorial to Curtis. A small lunar crater east of the larger crater Picard in Mare Crisium received the official name Curtis.
