Frank Elmore Ross and His Variable Star Discoveries

Volume 40 number 1 (2012)

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Wayne Osborn

Yerkes Observatory, 373 W. Geneva Street, Williams Bay, WI 53191; Wayne.Osborn@cmich.edu

Abstract

Frank Ross (1874-1960) was a talented astronomer that excelled in such diverse fields as computational astronomy, optical instrument design, and astrophotography. His career and astronomical contributions are briefly summarized. One contribution was finding 379 probable new variable stars. Most of these variables are poorly studied, and for a number the identifications are still uncertain and the variability not yet confirmed more than eighty years after publication. Ross’s original observing cards and plates are being used to re-examine the stars and resolve the problem cases. Follow-up work on a few stars has yielded interesting results. This work is illustrated with one example.