Background
Antonio Abetti was born on June 19, 1846 in San Pietro di Gorizia, Italy.
Antonio Abetti, June 19, 1846 – February 20, 1928.
Università di Padova, Universitas Studii Paduani, University of Padua.
University of Padua, where Abetti received his degree in civil engineering in 1867.
University of Padua, where Abetti received his degree in civil engineering in 1867.
Arcetri Observatory south of Florence, Italy.
Antonio Abetti e la rinascita dell'Osservatorio di Arcetri. A. Abetti, 1900.
Antonio Abetti at his work site.
The construction of the Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory, the Historical Archive of the Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory: Antonio and Giorgio Abetti Archive.
the University of Florence where Abetti served as a professor of astronomy until 1921.
Università di Padova, Universitas Studii Paduani, University of Padua.
University of Padua, where Abetti received his degree in civil engineering in 1867.
University of Padua, where Abetti received his degree in civil engineering in 1867.
Arcetri Observatory south of Florence, Italy.
Antonio Abetti e la rinascita dell'Osservatorio di Arcetri. A. Abetti, 1900.
Antonio Abetti at his work site.
The construction of the Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory, the Historical Archive of the Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory: Antonio and Giorgio Abetti Archive.
the University of Florence where Abetti served as a professor of astronomy until 1921.
Giorgio Abetti, 1882 – 1982, Italian solar astronomer.
Professor Giuseppe Lorenzoni with whom Abetti collaborated at Padua and went to Florence in 1893 as director of the Arcetri Observatory.
Giovanni Battista Donati, 16 December 1826 – 20 September 1873, an Italian astronomer and director of the Observatory of Florence.
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Antonio Abetti was born on June 19, 1846 in San Pietro di Gorizia, Italy.
Antonio Abetti received a degree in civil engineering from the University of Padua in 1867.
Although Abetti received a degree in civil engineering from the University of Padua in 1867, he abandoned engineering the following year in order to devote himself to astronomy. He was appointed astronomer of the observatory of the University of Padua in 1868, and he remained there until 1893. In 1894, following a public competitive examination, he was appointed director of the astronomical observatory of Arcetri and professor of astronomy at the University of Florence; he held this post until 1921, when he was obliged to retire because he had reached the compulsory retirement age. Nonetheless, from 1921 to 1928, Abetti continued his researches in astronomy at the observatory.
Abetti’s scientific activity was devoted essentially to positional astronomy. At Padua, with a modest equatorial telescope, he made many observations on the positions of small planets, comets, occultation of stars, and eclipses. In 1874, as a member of the Italian expedition directed by P. Tacchini, he went to Muddapur in Bengal, to observe the transit of Venus over the disc of the sun; it was the first time that this transit was observed through the spectroscope. Abetti also determined the geographic coordinates of the station.
In addition, Abetti determined the differences in longitude between various Italian localities, a project sponsored by the Italian Geodetic Commission. These studies resulted in the perfection and simplification of determinations of time. When he took over the directorship of the Arcetri observatory, which had been founded by G. B. Donati in 1872 and had been practically abandoned after Donati’s death, Abetti set about reconstructing it. He provided the observatory with an equatorial telescope, which he had built in the shops of the observatory of Padua. To it he adapted the well-known objective previously constructed by G. B. Amici, with a diameter of twenty-eight centimeters, and a “Bamberg’s small meridian circle.” With these instruments he was able to carry out, and to encourage others to carry out, many observations on the positions of small planets, comets, and fixed stars. All these observations and his scientific studies on the precision of observations, and the solution of equations that are met with in the method of least squares, are published in various issues of Memoirs and Observations of the Observatory of Arcetri.
During his career of almost 40 years, from 1879 to 1919, Abetti observed as many as 121 comets, determining for them 2600 positions, and 798 planets setting over 6500 positions, and only in Arcetri, from 1895 onwards, he came to establish as many as 7830 positions between comets and small planets.
Abetti was one of the Italian astronomical party of 1874 while being a part of an expedition led by Pietro Tacchini for observing the transit of Venus in India.
Another Abetti`s remarkable achievement was in the reorganisation of the Institute of Astrophysics, which was one of the most important in Italy. He also remounted Amici's famous equatorial and did important work in the study of the minor planets or asteroids, on which he published numerous papers.
The crater Abetti on the Moon is named after both Antonio and his son Giorgio Abetti, as well as the minor planet 2646 Abetti is also named after Antonio and his son.
Abetti main interest and an outlook were in the positional astronomy, observation of minor planets, comets and star occultations.
Quotations: Abetti once wrote about his son Giorgio, who succeeded him as a director of the Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory: «He [Giorgio ] inclined to the astronomical career, allowed to pass, in the past, the evenings to the equatorial to make me gain time for a more copious number of positions, taking care of small services, including the greater one to write the micrometer readings under dictation and the annotations ... Persevering with good promise in his well-established path, in the school of Padua, and then elsewhere, abroad, I promise myself that in a future not far away I can give a new and much more important contribution to the production of Arcetri... "
Abetti was a member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (Rome), associate member of the Royal Astronomical Society (London), and a member of several other Italian academies.
Abetti was married to Giovanna Colbachini in 1879 and they had two sons.
He was an Italian solar astronomer. Antonio and Giorgio Abetti were directors of the Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory from 1895 to 1925 and from 1925 to 1954 respectively; and, they left their incredible mark on Italian astronomical research.
Abetti collaborated at Padua with Professor Lorenzoni and went to Florence in 1893 as director of the Arcetri Observatory.
When Abetti took over the directorship of the Arcetri observatory, which had been founded by G.B. Donati in 1872 and had been practically abandoned after Donati’s death.
