Jan Oort

Jan Hendrik Oort (April 28, 1900 – November 5, 1992) was an internationally famous Dutch astronomer. He profoundly stimulated radio astronomy. The well-known Oort cloud bears his name.

A few of Oort's Discoveries

• Oort calculated that the centre of the Milky Way was 30,000 light years from the Earth in the direction of the constellation Sagitarius.
• He showed that the Milky Way had a mass 100 billion times that of the Sun.
• In 1950 he suggested that comets came from a common region of the Solar System (now called the Oort cloud).
• He found that the light from the Crab nebula was polarised, and produced by synchrotron emission.