The Earliest Infrared Light Curves

Volume 16 number 1 (1987)

Download this article (pdf)

Dorrit Hoffleit
Yale University

Abstract

In 1932 John S. Hall, a graduate student at Yale, built a caesium-oxide photoelectric photometer giving an effective wavelength of about 8000. With this he observed the Cepheid zeta Gem. Later Dr. A. L. Bennett used the same equipment to observe many variables. His light curves for only AO Cas, S Sge, and RT Aur were published. When Bennett was called for war work by the Navy he left behind observations on 30 long period variables and a few others of short period. As he did not return to astronomy after the war this wealth of observations has never been published.