Google Doodle Celebrates Mexican Astronomer Guillermo Haro

"Google" is spelled out in stars, and also includes a sketch of a man's face. — A new graphic on Google's homepage March 21, 2018, celebrates what would be the 105th birthday of Mexican astronomer Guillermo Haro. (Image credit: Google)

Google's latest homepage Doodle celebrates Guillermo Haro, a Mexican astronomer who in 1959 became the first Mexican elected to the Royal Astronomical Society.

Today (March 21) would have been Haro's 105th birthday. He gives his name (along with astronomer George Herbig) to Herbig-Haro objects, glowing arcs and splotches of light that come from baby stars creating shock waves as they blast out high-speed jets of material into surrounding gas. The relatively short-lived objects point the way to the universe's newborn stars. He also discovered bright variable stars called flare stars in the Orion constellation, which can unpredictably boost their brightness for minutes at the time.

This image of Herbig-Haro object HH 46/47 combines radio observations acquired with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) with much shorter wavelength visible light observations from ESO&rsquo;s New Technology Telescope (NTT). The ALMA observations (orange and green, lower right) of the newborn star reveal a large energetic jet moving away from us, which in the visible is hidden by dust and gas. To the left (in pink and purple) the visible part of the jet is seen, streaming partly towards us. — This image of Herbig-Haro object HH 46/47 combines radio observations acquired with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) with much shorter wavelength visible light observations from ESO’s New Technology Telescope (NTT). The ALMA observations (orange and green, lower right) of the newborn star reveal a large energetic jet moving away from us, which in the visible is hidden by dust and gas. To the left (in pink and purple) the visible part of the jet is seen, streaming partly towards us. (Image credit: ESO/ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/H. Arce. Acknowledgements: Bo Reipurth)

"Born in Mexico in 1913, Haro grew up during the Mexican revolution and graduated in philosophy before embarking upon a career in astronomy," Google representatives wrote in a blog post. "Haro's legacy endures to this day through the National Institute of Astrophysics, Optics and Electronics, which he established to support science students in their professional careers. The institute also runs an observatory named after him in the Mexican state of Sonora."

Email Sarah Lewin at slewin@space.com or follow her @SarahExplains. Followus @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

Sarah Lewin started writing for Space.com in June of 2015 as a Staff Writer and became Associate Editor in 2019 . Her work has been featured by Scientific American, IEEE Spectrum, Quanta Magazine, Wired, The Scientist, Science Friday and WGBH's Inside NOVA. Sarah has an MA from NYU's Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program and an AB in mathematics from Brown University. When not writing, reading or thinking about space, Sarah enjoys musical theatre and mathematical papercraft. She is currently Assistant News Editor at Scientific American. You can follow her on Twitter @SarahExplains.