Guillermo Haro

Who was Guillermo Haro?

Guillermo Haro was a Mexican astronomer. he was born in Mexico City, where he grew during the time of the Mexican Revolution. He studied philosophy at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He became interested in astronomy and because of his dedication and enthusiasm was hired in 1943 as an assistant at the newly founded Observatorio Astrofísico de Tonantzintla. In order to pursue his astronomical training he visited the U.S. and worked from 1943 to 1944 at Harvard College Observatory.

Upon his return to Mexico in 1945 he continued working at the Observatorio Astrofísico de Tonantzintla where he was responsible for the commissioning of the new 24-31-inch. Schmidt camera and where he became involved in the study of extremely red and extremely blue stars. In 1947 he started working for the Observatorio de Tacubaya of the UNAM

Guillermo Haro made many contributions to observational astronomy, especially with the Tonantzintla Schmidt telescope. Among them were the detection of a large number of planetary nebulae in the direction of the galactic center and the discovery of the nonstellar condensations in high density clouds near regions of recent star formation. Haro and co-workers discovered flare stars in the Orion nebula region, and later on in stellar aggregates of different ages. His intense activity detecting flare stars continued till the end of his life.