Édouard Jean-Marie Stephan (31 August 1837 – 31 December 1923) was a French astronomer. His surname is sometimes spelled Stéphan in some literature, but this is apparently erroneous.
He was born in Sainte Pezenne (today one of the districts of the town of Niort) and attended the Ecole Normale Superieure, and graduated at the top of his class in 1862.
He was the director of the Marseille Observatory from 1864 to 1907 (until 1872 he was subordinate to Urbain le Verrier). In the early part of his career there, he had limited opportunities to do observations because he was preoccupied with improving the observatory. He did this by obscuring the reflector with a mask containing two vertical slits.
The star he chose to perform this experiment was Sirius. He did not succeed in resolving any stellar disks,
In 1881 he discovered NGC 5, and he discovered the galaxy NGC 6027 the following year using the 80 cm reflector.
Among others, he discovered Stephan's Quintet, also known as "Arp 319", a group of five galaxies. Stephan made this discovery with the first telescope equipped with a reflection coated mirror.
In 1884 the French Academy of Sciences awarded him the Valz Prize (Prix Valz). His name is associated with the periodic comet 38P/Stephan-Oterma, although Jérôme Coggia saw it first.
He became a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur in 1868 and an Officier of the Légion d'honneur in 1879.
{| border=1 cellpadding=5
|+ Asteroids discovered: 2
| 89 Julia || 6 August 1866
|-
| 91 Aegina || 4 November 1866
|}
References
Obituary
- JO 7 (1924) 9