Who produced the first star catalog of the Southern Hemisphere, edited Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica, and correctly predicted the return of a comet?
Who produced the first star catalog of the Southern Hemisphere, edited Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica, and correctly predicted the return of a comet? Correct Answer Edmond Halley
Edmond Halley’s star catalog, published late in 1678, was the first such work to be published containing telescopically determined locations of southern stars, and it established his reputation as an astronomer. He edited the text of Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica and saw it through the press in 1687. Halley published in 1705 A Synopsis of the Astronomy of Comets, in which he showed that the three historic comets of 1531, 1607, and 1682 were so similar in characteristics that they must have been successive returns of the same object—now known as Halley's Comet—and accurately predicted its return in 1758.