Robert Burnham, Jr.

Robert Burnham Jr. (June 16, 1931 – March 20, 1993) was an American astronomer, best known for writing the classic three-volume Burnham's Celestial Handbook. He discovered numerous asteroids, including the Mars crossing asteroid 3397 Leyla, and six comets.

Burnham's late years were tragic; he died destitute and alone. However, he is remembered by a generation of deep sky observers for his unique contribution to astronomy, the Celestial Handbook. The main-belt asteroid 3467 Bernheim was named in his honor.

Originally self-published in a loose-leaf serial format beginning in 1966, and with a revised edition by Dover Publications in 1978, the Celestial Handbook was well reviewed in amateur astronomy magazines and became a best seller in this specialized field. It is still in print and is considered to be a classic in the literature of amateur astronomy.

The color contrast of Albireo (β Cygni):

Messier 22:

Burnham and sabi:

Burnham, the Pleiades, and Devil's Tower:

Life after Lowell

In April 1979, the year after Celestial Handbook was published by Dover, Burnham received notice that the proper motion survey would soon be completed and that the observatory could not afford to keep him on in the position he had long held. Despite months of warning, he failed to make other arrangements and, after twenty-one years at Lowell, his job ended in December of that year. Unwilling to take the only position that was offered to him, that of janitor at the observatory, he left.

Naming of 3467 Bernheim Norm Thomas, Burnham's former co-worker at Lowell Observatory, had told Burnham that he planned to name an asteroid after him. On September 26, 1981, Thomas discovered a main belt asteroid, but since asteroid 834 Burnhamia, named after the unrelated 19th century astronomer Sherburne Wesley Burnham, already carried the name, a different spelling was needed. Thomas chose the spelling Bernheim, for the Burnham family's ancestral Bohemian surname.

Burnham rarely gave interviews, but at the height of the popularity of Handbook in 1982, he wrote a piece where he playfully interviewed himself for the magazine Astronomy. A much longer version of this essay, An Interview with the author of The Celestial Handbook, dated April 1983, was discovered among Burnham's papers and it was first published in its entirety by The Village Voice in June 2011, 18 years after his death.