Everything about Johannes Fabricius totally explained
Johann(es) Fabricius (
8 January 1587 –
19 March 1616), eldest son of
David Fabricius (1564-1617), was a
Frisian/
German astronomer and a discoveror of
sunspots, independently of
Galileo Galilei.
Biography
Johannes was born in in
Resterhafe (Friesland). He returned from university in the
Netherlands with telescopes that they turned on the
Sun. Despite the difficulties of observing the sun directly, they noted the existence of
sunspots, the first confirmed instance of their observation (though unclear statements in
East Asian annals suggest that
Chinese astronomers may have discovered them with the naked eye previously, and Fabricius may have noticed them himself without a telescope a few years before). The pair soon invented
camera obscura telescopy so as to save their eyes and get a better view of the solar disk, and observed that the spots moved. They would appear on the eastern edge of the disk, steadily move to the western edge, disappear, then reappear at the east again after the passage of the same amount of time that it had taken for it to cross the disk in the first place.
Copies of a map he made of Frisia in 1589 are also still extant. He is also name-checked in
Jules Verne's
From the Earth to the Moon as someone who claimed to have seen lunar inhabitants through his telescope, though that particular fact is merely part of Verne's fiction. The large (90 kilometer)
Fabricius crater on the
Moon's southern hemisphere is named after David Fabricius.
He died in
Marienhafe.
Legacy
In 1895 a monument was erected to his memory in the churchyard at Osteel where he was
pastor from 1603 until 1617.
Work
- Joh. Fabricii Phrysii De Maculis in Sole observatis, et apparente earum cum Sole conversione, Narratio etc. Witebergae Anno M.DC.XI.
Literature
Gerhard Berthold: Der Magister Johann Fabricius und die Sonnenflecken, nebst einem Excurs über David Fabricius, Leipzig 1894
L. Häpke: Fabricius und die Entdeckung der Sonnenflecken, in: Abhandlungen des naturwissenschaftlichen Vereins zu Bremen 10, 1888, S. 249-272
Bunte: Über Johannes Fabricus, den Entdecker der Sonnenflecken, in: Jahrbuch der Ges. für bildende Kunst und vaterländ. Altertümer zu Emden 9, H. 1, 1890, S. 59-77
Diedrich Wattenberg: David Fabricius. Der Astronom Ostfrieslands, Berlin 1964.
Fritz Krafft: in Walther Killys Literaturlexikon: Autoren und Werke deutscher Sprache. (15 Bände) Gütersloh; München: Bertelsmann-Lexikon-Verl. 1988-1991 (CD-ROM Berlin 1998 ISBN 3-932544-13-7) Bd. 3 S.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Johannes Fabricius'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://johannes_fabricius.totallyexplained.com">Johannes Fabricius Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
