William Wallace Campbell’s avatar

William Wallace Campbell

Historical profile
American astronomer​·​1862–1938

Chronicled events

  1. #5755

    Photographs from the eclipses of 1901, 1905, and 1908 show no planet inside Mercury’s orbit big enough to explain its motion. Whatever moves Mercury’s perihelion, it isn’t a planet, or anything else bright enough to photograph.

  2. #5757

    Clouds covered the Sun during the eclipse, so we couldn’t measure how much the starlight was bent.