Everything about George Alcock totally explained
George Eric Deacon Alcock (
August 28 1912 Peterborough,
Cambridgeshire –
December 15 2000) was an
English astronomer. He was one of the most successful visual discoverers of
novae and
comets.
Initially, his interest in
astronomy involved observation of
meteors and
meteor showers, but in
1953 he decided to start searching for
comets and in
1955 began searching for
novae. His technique was to memorize the patterns of thousands of stars, so that he'd visually recognize any intruder.
In
1959 he discovered comet
C/1959 Q1 (Alcock), the first comet discovered in Britain since
1894, and only five days later discovered another,
C/1959 Q2 (Alcock). He discovered two more comets in
1963 and
1965. He later discovered his first nova, Nova Delphini 1967 (
HR Delphini), which turned out to have an unusual light curve. He discovered two more novas, LV Vul (in 1968) and V368 Sct (in 1970). He found his fifth and final comet in
1983: C/1983 H1 (
IRAS-Araki-Alcock). In
1991 he found the nova V838 Her.
He was awarded an
MBE, and the
asteroid 3174 Alcock is named after him.
He also maintained an active interest in
meteorology (the study of weather, unrelated to his interest in meteors).
His achievements were fairly remarkable, and with the modern invention of
CCDs and photometry and automated and computerized search programs that make his visual discovery techniques seem entirely quaint and obsolete, it's unlikely that such achievements will ever be repeated.
Alcock won the
Jackson-Gwilt Medal of the
Royal Astronomical Society in
1963 and
Amateur Achievement Award of the
Astronomical Society of the Pacific in 1981.
After his death, a plaque was placed in
Peterborough Cathedral in his memory.
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