C. H. F. Peters: revolutionary, surveyor and asteroid hunter

The life of the German-American astronomer who found Iphigenia and 47 other asteroids from upstate New York.

Published 2026-10-23

The man who discovered Iphigenia had one of the more dramatic biographies in nineteenth-century astronomy.^[3]

From Schleswig to Etna

Christian Heinrich Friedrich Peters was born on 19 September 1813 in Koldenbüttel, Schleswig. He earned a PhD in Berlin in 1836 and studied in Göttingen under Carl Friedrich Gauss. From 1838 to 1843 he surveyed Mount Etna in Sicily.^[3]

Revolution and exile

During the revolutions of 1848 he became involved with radical groups in Sicily, fled to France and then to the Ottoman Empire. At the suggestion of the U.S. consul in Istanbul, he emigrated to the United States in 1854.^[3]

Hamilton College

In 1858 he became director of the Litchfield Observatory at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York.^[3] There he discovered 48 asteroids, from 72 Feronia in 1861 to 287 Nephthys in 1889.^[3] Iphigenia, number 112, came on his 57th birthday in 1870.^[2][3]

Transit of Venus

In 1874 he led a U.S. Naval Observatory expedition to Queenstown, New Zealand, to observe the transit of Venus.^[3]

A complicated end

From 1889 he was involved in the “Great Star-Catalog Case”, a lawsuit with his former assistant Charles Borst over a star catalogue. He died in July 1890, found on the doorstep of his lodgings, apparently on his way to the observatory.^[3]

Numbered citations link to the sources list on the Iphigenia overview page.