Biography
He took advantage of wartime blackout conditions during World War II, which reduced light pollution at Mount Wilson Observatory, to resolve stars in the center of the Andromeda galaxy for the first time, which led him to define distinct "populations" for stars (Population I and Population II). The same observations led him to discover that there are two types of Cepheid variable stars. This discovery led him to recalculate the size of the known universe, doubling the previous calculation made by Hubble in 1929. He announced this finding to considerable astonishment at the 1952 meeting of the International Astronomical Union in Rome.
Together with Fritz Zwicky, he identified supernovae as a new category of astronomical objects. Zwicky and he also proposed the existence of neutron stars, and proposed that supernovae could create neutron stars.
Beginning in 1952 he and Rudolph Minkowski identified the optical counterparts of various radio sources,, including Cygnus A. He discovered 10 asteroids, including notably 944 Hidalgo (long orbital period) and the Apollo-class asteroid 1566 Icarus (whose perihelion is closer than that of Mercury) and the Amor asteroid 1036 Ganymed.
Read more about this topic: Walter Baade
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“A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.”
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