Giuseppe Piazzi (US: /ˈpjɑːtsi/ PYAHT-see,[1] Italian: [dʒuˈzɛppe ˈpjattsi]; 16 July 1746 – 22 July 1826)

was an Italian Catholic priest of the Theatine order, mathematician, and astronomer. He established an
observatory at Palermo, now the Osservatorio Astronomico di Palermo – Giuseppe S. Vaiana.[2] Perhaps
his most famous discovery was the first dwarf planet, Ceres.

Contents

1 Early life

2 Astronomy career

2.1 Star cataloguing

2.2 The dwarf planet Ceres

3 Posthumous honours

4 Works

5 See also

6 References

7 Sources

8 External links

Early life

No documented account of Piazzi's scientific education is available in any of the biographies of the
astronomer, even in the oldest ones. Piazzi certainly did some studies in Turin, quite likely attending
Giovan Battista Beccaria's lessons. In the years 1768–1770 he was resident at the Theatines' Home in S.
Andrea della Valle, Rome, while studying Mathematics under François Jacquier.

In July 1770, he took the chair of Mathematics at the University of Malta. In December 1773, he moved
to Ravenna as "prefetto degli studenti" and lecturer in Philosophy and Mathematics at the Collegio dei
Nobili, where he stayed until the beginning of 1779. After a short period spent in Cremona and in Rome,
in March 1781 Piazzi moved to Palermo as lecturer in Mathematics at the University of Palermo (at the
time known as "Accademia de' Regj Studi").

He kept this position until 19 January 1787, when he became Professor of Astronomy. Almost at the
same time, he was granted permission to spend two years in Paris and London, to undergo some
practical training in astronomy and also to get some instruments to be specially built for the Palermo
Observatory, whose foundation he was in charge of.

In the period spent abroad, from 13 March 1787 until the end of 1789, Piazzi became acquainted with
the major French and English astronomers of his time and was able to have the famous altazimuthal
circle made by Jesse Ramsden, one of the most skilled instrument-makers of the 18th century. The circle
was the most important instrument of the Palermo Observatory, whose official foundation took place
on 1 July 1790.

In 1817, King Ferdinand put Piazzi in charge of the completion of the Capodimonte (Naples)
Observatory, naming him General Director of the Naples and Sicily Observatories.

Astronomy career

Star cataloguing

He supervised the compilation of the Palermo Catalogue of stars, containing 7,646 star entries with
unprecedented precision,[3] including the star names "Garnet Star" from Herschel, and the original
Rotanev and Sualocin. The work to observe the sky methodically. The catalogue wasn't finished for first
edition publication until 1803, with a second edition in 1814.[4]

Spurred by the success discovering Ceres (see below), and in the line of his catalogue program, Piazzi
studied the proper motions of stars to find parallax measurement candidates. One of them, 61 Cygni,
was specially appointed as a good candidate for measuring a parallax, which was later performed by
Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel.[5] The star system 61 Cygni is sometimes still called variously Piazzi's Flying
Star and Bessel's Star.

The dwarf planet Ceres

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Piazzi's observations published in the Monatliche Correspondenz, September 1801

Piazzi discovered Ceres. On 1 January 1801 Piazzi discovered a "stellar object" that moved against the
background of stars. At first he thought it was a fixed star, but once he noticed that it moved, he
became convinced it was a planet, or as he called it, "a new star".

In his journal, he wrote:

The light was a little faint, and of the colour of Jupiter, but similar to many others which generally are
reckoned of the eighth magnitude. Therefore I had no doubt of its being any other than a fixed star. In
the evening of the second I repeated my observations, and having found that it did not correspond
either in time or in distance from the zenith with the former observation, I began to entertain some
doubts of its accuracy. I conceived afterwards a great suspicion that it might be a new star. The evening
of the third, my suspicion was converted into certainty, being assured it was not a fixed star.
Nevertheless before I made it known, I waited till the evening of the fourth, when I had the satisfaction
to see it had moved at the same rate as on the preceding days.
In spite of his assumption that it was a planet, he took the conservative route and announced it as a
comet. In a letter to astronomer Barnaba Oriani of Milan he made his suspicions known in writing:

I have announced this star as a comet, but since it is not accompanied by any nebulosity and, further,
since its movement is so slow and rather uniform, it has occurred to me several times that it might be
something better than a comet. But I have been careful not to advance this supposition to the public.

He was not able to observe it long enough as it was soon lost in the glare of the Sun. Unable to compute
its orbit with existing methods, the mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss developed a new method of
orbit calculation that allowed astronomers to locate it again. After its orbit was better determined, it
was clear that Piazzi's assumption was correct and this object was not a comet but more like a small
planet. Coincidentally, it was also almost exactly where the Titius-Bode law predicted a planet would be.

Piazzi named it "Ceres Ferdinandea," after the Roman and Sicilian goddess of grain and King Ferdinand
IV of Naples and Sicily. The Ferdinandea part was later dropped for political reasons. Ceres turned out to
be the first, and largest, of the asteroids existing within the asteroid belt. Ceres is today called a dwarf
planet.

Posthumous honours

Born in Italy and named in his honour was the astronomer Charles Piazzi Smyth, son of the astronomer
William Henry Smyth. In 1871, a memorial statue of Piazzi sculpted by Costantino Corti was dedicated in
the main plaza of his birthplace, Ponte. In 1923, the 1000th asteroid to be numbered was named 1000
Piazzia in his honour.[6] The lunar crater Piazzi was named after him in 1935. More recently, a large
albedo feature, probably a crater, imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope on Ceres, has been informally
named Piazzi.

Works

Discorso recitato nell'aprirsi la prima volta la Cattedra di astronomia nell'Accademia de' r. Studj di
Palermo, 1790

Discorso recitato nell'aprirsi la prima volta la Cattedra di astronomia nell'Accademia de' r. Studj di
Palermo (in Italian). Palermo: Stamperia reale. 1790.

See also

Niccolò Cacciatore, his assistant and successor in the post as director

List of Roman Catholic scientist-clerics

References

"Piazzi". The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.). HarperCollins. Retrieved
10 August 2019.
Osservatorio astronomico di Palermo – Giuseppe S. Vaiana

DavidDarling.com: Piazzi, Giuseppe (1746–1826)

Fox 1913.

On the history of the Palermo Astronomical Observatory by Giorgia Foderà Serio

Schmadel, Lutz D. (2003). "(1000) Piazzia". Dictionary of Minor Planet Names – (1000) Piazzia. Springer
Berlin Heidelberg. p. 86. doi:10.1007/978-3-540-29925-7_1001. ISBN 978-3-540-29925-7.

Sources

Clifford Cunningham, Brian Marsden, Wayne Orchiston. (2011) "Giuseppe Piazzi: the controversial
discovery and loss of Ceres in 1801." Journal for the History of Astronomy, Volume 42.

Cunningham, C. J. (2001). The First Asteroid. Star Lab Press. ISBN 978-0-9708162-2-1.

Foderà Serio, G.; Manara, A.; Sicoli, P. (2002). "Giuseppe Piazzi and the Discovery of Ceres" (PDF). In W.
F. Bottke Jr.; A. Cellino; P. Paolicchi; R. P. Binzel (eds.). Asteroids III. Tucson, Arizona: University of
Arizona Press. pp. 17–24.

Fox, William (1913). "Giuseppe Piazzi" . In Herbermann, Charles (ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia. New York:
Robert Appleton Company.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Giuseppe Piazzi.

Santaniello, Francesco (2015). "PIAZZI, Giuseppe". Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Volume 83:
Piacentini–Pio V (in Italian). Rome: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. ISBN 978-8-81200032-6.

Catholic Encyclopedia entry for Giuseppe Piazzi

Works by or about Giuseppe Piazzi in libraries (WorldCat catalog)

Giuseppe Piazzi and the Discovery of Ceres

Portrait of Giuseppe Piazzi from the Lick Observatory Records Digital Archive, UC Santa Cruz Library's
Digital Collections Archived 4 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine