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Up For sale a VERY RARE! "The Joy Crater" Alfred Joy Hand Signed First Day Cover Dated 1948
ES-3263
Alfred Harrison Joy (September
23, 1882 in Greenville, Illinois –
April 18, 1973 in Pasadena, California) was
an astronomer best known for his work on stellar distances,
the radial motion of stars, and variable stars. A crater on the moon has been named in his honor. He was
born in Greenville, Illinois, the
son of F.P. Joy, a prominent clothing merchant in Greenville and one-time mayor
of the town. He received a BA from Greenville College in 1903 and an MA
from Oberlin College the
next year. After graduating, Joy went on to work at the American University of
Beirut in the Syrian Protestant College as a professor of
astronomy and the director of the observatory. He was forced to return to the
U.S. in 1915 because of World War I. In the United
States, he worked at the Mount Wilson Observatory from
1915 to 1952. There, he and his colleagues ascertained the spectral type, absolute magnitude, and
stellar distance of over 5,000 stars. Joy also initially defined the T-Tauri type star. He studied the Doppler displacement of the spectral lines of stars to
determine their radial velocities deducing a star's absolute dimensions,
masses, and the orbital elements of some specific stars. He won the Bruce Medal in 1950. He was president of the Astronomical
Society of the Pacific in 1931 and 1939.
