Norman Robert Pogson

**Asteroids discovered: 8**
42 Isis	May 23 1856
43 Ariadne	April 15 1857
46 Hestia	August 16 1857
67 Asia	April 17 1861
80 Sappho	May 2 1864
87 Sylvia	May 16 1866
107 Camilla	November 17 1868
245 Vera	February 6 1885

Norman Robert Pogson (March 23, 1829 – June 23, 1891) was a British astronomer who worked in Oxford and in Madras, India.

In 1856 he formalized the system of stellar magnitudes, by defining magnitudes logarithmically and fixing a difference of five magnitudes as corresponding to a hundred-fold difference in brightness.

A lunar crater is named after him, and so is the asteroid 1830 Pogson.

References

Magnitudes of Thirty-six of the Minor Planets for the first day of each month of the year 1857, N. Pogson, MNRAS 17 pp 12 1856 in which Pogson first introduced his magnitude system

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