Asteroid Asteroid Asteroids are a class of small Solar System bodies in orbit around the Sun. They have also been called planetoids, especially the larger ones... s discovered: 1
676 Melitta 676 Melitta -External links:*...	January 16, 1909

Philibert Jacques Melotte (January 29, 1880 – March 30, 1961) was a British astronomer

Astronomer

An astronomer is a scientist who studies celestial bodies such as planets, stars and galaxies.Historically, astronomy was more concerned with the classification and description of phenomena in the sky, while astrophysics attempted to explain these phenomena and the differences between them using...

 whose parents immigrated from Belgium

Belgium

Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...

.

In 1908 he discovered a moon

Natural satellite

A natural satellite or moon is a celestial body that orbits a planet or smaller body, which is called its primary. The two terms are used synonymously for non-artificial satellites of planets, of dwarf planets, and of minor planets....

 of Jupiter

Jupiter

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet within the Solar System. It is a gas giant with mass one-thousandth that of the Sun but is two and a half times the mass of all the other planets in our Solar System combined. Jupiter is classified as a gas giant along with Saturn,...

, today known as Pasiphaë

Pasiphaë (moon)

Pasiphaë is a retrograde irregular satellite of Jupiter. It was discovered in 1908 by Philibert Jacques Melotte and later named after the mythological Pasiphaë, wife of Minos and mother of the Minotaur from Greek legend....

. It was simply designated "Jupiter VIII" and was not given its present name until 1975.

The asteroid

Asteroid

Asteroids are a class of small Solar System bodies in orbit around the Sun. They have also been called planetoids, especially the larger ones...

 676 Melitta

676 Melitta

-External links:*...

, the only one he discovered, is named after him, in a way. Its name is in fact the Attic

Attic

An attic is a space found directly below the pitched roof of a house or other building . Attic is generally the American/Canadian reference to it...

 form of the Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

 Melissa, the bee, but its resemblance to the discoverer's name is not fortuitous.

The conspicuous star cluster

Star cluster

Star clusters or star clouds are groups of stars. Two types of star clusters can be distinguished: globular clusters are tight groups of hundreds of thousands of very old stars which are gravitationally bound, while open clusters, more loosely clustered groups of stars, generally contain less than...

 in the Coma Berenices

Coma Berenices

Coma Berenices is a traditional asterism that has since been defined as one of the 88 modern constellations. It is located near Leo, to which it formerly belonged, and accommodates the North Galactic Pole...

 constellation

Constellation

In modern astronomy, a constellation is an internationally defined area of the celestial sphere. These areas are grouped around asterisms, patterns formed by prominent stars within apparent proximity to one another on Earth's night sky....

 is commonly designated Mel 111 since it appeared in Melotte's 1915 catalog of deep sky objects but not in Charles Messier

Charles Messier

Charles Messier was a French astronomer most notable for publishing an astronomical catalogue consisting of deep sky objects such as nebulae and star clusters that came to be known as the 110 "Messier objects"...

's famous catalogue

Messier object

The Messier objects are a set of astronomical objects first listed by French astronomer Charles Messier in 1771. The original motivation of the catalogue was that Messier was a comet hunter, and was frustrated by objects which resembled but were not comets...

 or in the New General Catalogue

New General Catalogue

The New General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars is a well-known catalogue of deep sky objects in astronomy. It contains 7,840 objects, known as the NGC objects...

 since it was not proved to be a true cluster until 1938.http://www.seds.org/messier/xtra/ngc/mel111.html

Melotte was awarded the Jackson-Gwilt Medal

Jackson-Gwilt Medal

The Jackson-Gwilt Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society has been awarded regularly since 1897 for the invention, improvement, or development of astronomical instrumentation or techniques; for achievement in observational astronomy; or for achievement in research into the history of astronomy.The...

 of the Royal Astronomical Society

Royal Astronomical Society

The Royal Astronomical Society is a learned society that began as the Astronomical Society of London in 1820 to support astronomical research . It became the Royal Astronomical Society in 1831 on receiving its Royal Charter from William IV...

in 1909.