Peter van de Kamp
Piet van de Kamp (December 26, 1901 – May 18, 1995), known as
Peter van de Kamp in the United States, was a Dutch
astronomer who lived in the United States most of his life. He was professor of astronomy at
Swarthmore College and director of the college's
Sproul Observatory from 1937 until 1972. He specialized in
astrometry, studying
parallax and
proper motions of stars. He came to public attention in the 1960s when he announced that
Barnard's star had a planetary system based on observed "wobbles" in its motion, but this is now known to be false.
On November 14, 2018, the
Red Dots project announced that
Barnard's star hosts an exoplanet at least 3.2 times as massive as Earth, though this does not match either of the planets he had claimed. In 2021, even this planet's existence was questioned.
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