Jan Oort Biography

Jan Oort Biography

     Jan Oort was born April 28th 1900.  He died 92 years later on the 5th of November.  During his life time he contributed almost unmeasurably to the field of astronomy and remains an extremely well recognized astronomer even today.

     Oort is clearly most recognized for the aptly named Oort cloud.  This cloud is a hypothetical spherical cloud of comets that lie nearly a light year away from the sun. The outer edge of this belt of comets defines the outer limits of our Solar System.  The outer edge of the Oort cloud is gravitationally affected by passing stars and by the Milky Way Galaxy itself.  Although, currently, technology does not allow the direct observation of the existence of the Oort cloud, it is commonly accepted that this cloud is the place where all long period comets and Halley-type comets come from as they start there trip across our Solar System.  Oort postulated in 1950 that all comets come from the same place.  This was incorrect.  However, its principle is now accepted as fact due to this Oort cloud.

     Another very popular discovery that he made, which was actually more of a calculation, was his discovery that the center of the Milky Way lies 5900 parsecs away from Earth in the direction of Sagittarius.  He also showed that the Milky Way has a mass 1 billion times that of the Sun.  He also found that the Crab Nebula was polarized.  From this discovery he theorized synchrotron emission.

     Another thing that was named after Oort besides the Oort cloud was his calculated constants imaginitively named Oort's Constants.  These constants A and B are empirically defined paramaters or the rotationaly properties of our galaxy.  I would elaborate more on these extremely impressive foundings if I understood what they were.

     Many astronomers are very good at observation.  Many astronomers prefer calculated and applied astronomy.  Although Oort was clearly gifted at both it is obvious that he was more inclined to heavily mathematical and applied astronomy.

     The Dutch born astronomer's death marked the end of one of the great 20th century astronomer's life and consequently his extremely prolific discoveries.  After his death a colleague remarked "The great oak of Astronomy has been felled, and we are lost without its shadow."





P.S. I've been trying to get this to post all day long. Every time I have tried it won't let me. Hopefully this time it will go through.