Walter Adams determines an incredibly high density for Sirius B

Historical Context Note

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.3: American (US) Writing and Culture: The Early Twentieth-century , 1900-1945.
Vol. editors: J. Michael Duvall (College of Charleston), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Tony Papanikolas (San Jose State University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Domains

Stellar Astronomy

Dates

Date of occurrence 1914

Places

United States (Location)

Resources

Save to Bookshelf

Walter Sydney Adams (20th December, 1876 - 11th May, 1956) was an American astronomer. In 1915 he determined that Sirius B, though no bigger than the earth, was in fact much hotter than the Sun. From this he concluded it must have an extremely high density, and so discovered the first white dwarf star.

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

51 words

Save this article