Young, Charles Augustus (1834–1908)

US astronomer who made some of the first spectroscopic investigations of the Sun. He was the first person to observe the spectrum of the solar corona.

Young was born in Hannover, New Hampshire, and studied there at Dartmouth College. He was professor at the Western Reserve College, Hudson, Ohio, 1856–66; at Dartmouth College 1866–77; and at Princeton 1877–1905.

Young discovered a layer in the solar atmosphere in which the dark hues of the Sun's spectrum are momentarily reversed at the moment of a total solar eclipse. He published a series of papers relating his spectroscopic observations of the solar chromosphere, solar prominences, and sunspots. He also compiled a catalogue of bright spectral lines in the Sun and used these to measure its rotational velocity.

Young wrote several best-selling textbooks: General Astronomy 1888, Lessons in Astronomy 1891, and Manual of Astronomy 1902.