Brian G. Marsden

Brian Geoffrey Marsden (5 August 1937 – 18 November 2010) was a British astronomer and the longtime director of the Minor Planet Center (MPC) at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (director emeritus from 2006 to 2010).

Education

Marsden was educated at The Perse School in Cambridge, New College, Oxford and Yale University.

Life

Marsden specialized in celestial mechanics and astrometry, collecting data on the positions of asteroids and comets and computing their orbits, often from minimal observational information and providing their future positions on International Astronomical Union (IAU) circulars. In addition to serving as MPC director since 1978, he served as the director of the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams (CBAT) from 1968 to 1999. He was president of Commission 6, and Commission 20 the IAU.

Marsden helped recover once lost asteroids and lost comets. Some asteroid and comet discoveries of previous decades were "lost" because not enough observational data had been obtained at the time to determine a reliable enough orbit to know where to look for re-observation at future dates. Occasionally, a newly discovered object turns out to be a rediscovery of a previously lost object, which can be determined by calculating its orbit backwards into the past and matching calculated positions with the previously recorded positions of the lost object. In the case of comets this is especially tricky because of nongravitational forces that can affect their orbits (one of which is emission of jets of gas from the comet nucleus), but Marsden has specialized in calculating such nongravitational forces. Notably, he successfully predicted the 1992 return of the once-lost Comet Swift-Tuttle.

Brian Griffin

Brian Griffin is fictional character from the animated television series Family Guy. An anthropomorphic white dog, voiced by Seth MacFarlane, he is one of the show's main characters and a member of the Griffin family. He primarily works in the series as a struggling writer, attempting essays, novels, screenplays and newspaper articles.

He first appeared on television, along with the rest of the family, in a 15-minute short on December 20, 1998. Brian was created and designed by MacFarlane himself. MacFarlane was asked to pitch a pilot to the Fox Broadcasting Company, based on The Life of Larry and Larry & Steve, two shorts made by MacFarlane featuring a middle-aged character named Larry and an intellectual dog, Steve. After the pilot was given the green light, the Griffin family appeared in the episode "Death Has a Shadow". Brian's appearance is a redesign of Steve the dog, from MacFarlane's previous show.

Brian has been featured in many items of merchandise for Family Guy, and he is considered to be one of the show's biggest merchandising icons. He has also made crossover appearances in the other MacFarlane-produced shows American Dad! and The Cleveland Show.