Named for William Huggins (1824–1910), pioneer in astronomical spectroscopy. Huggins stated that the chemical elements on the Earth also existed in the stars, discovered the gaseous nature of bright nebulae, was the first to study the spectrum of a nova and measured the radial velocity of Sirius. As early as 1875 he had devised methods of photographing spectra, and this resulted in the publication of his Atlas of Representative Stellar Spectra in 1899. (M 9768) _ _.