Ladislaus Weinek

Who was Ladislaus Weinek?

Ladislaus Weinek was an Austro-Hungarian astronomer.

He was educated in Vienna, and worked for a period at the photography laboratories in Schwerin.

In 1874 he joined a German expedition to the Kerguelen Islands to observe a transit of Venus across the face of the Sun. His results from the expedition were published in Nova Acta Leopoldina.

In 1883 he became a professor in Prague and was the ninth director of the Klementinum observatory. There, on Nov. 27, 1885, he took the first known photograph of a meteor. He set up observing stations in Prague and Jena, and caught a 7mm-long trail on a plate in Prague.

In collaboration with Friedrich Küstner, he made measurements of the height of the pole. During their investigations they also discovered polar motion, the movement of the Earth's polar axis relative to the crust.

Using images taken at the Lick Observatory and the Meudon Observatory, he produced the first atlas of the Moon that was based on photographs.

The crater Weinek on the Moon and the asteroid 7114 Weinek are named after him.