Pietro Angelo Secchi (1818–1878) was an Italian astronomer. Born in Reggio Italy, Father Secchi spent his latter years in Rome, where he died on February 26, 1878.
He was a pioneer of astronomical spectroscopy along with Joseph von Fraunhofer. He was a Jesuit and at age 32 became the director of the Vatican Observatory. Through his solar observations, he discovered the existence of solar spicules.
He drew one of the early maps of Mars in 1858, in which he called Syrtis Major the "Atlantic Canal". He thus anticipated Schiaparelli's use of the term canali, although Secchi's canals were not the long straight-line Martian canals of Schiaparelli and Lowell.
The Secchi crater on the Moon and a crater on Mars are named after him.
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