Philibert Jacques Melotte (29 January 1880 – 30 March 1961) was a British astronomer whose parents emigrated from Belgium.
The outer main-belt asteroid 676 Melitta, the only asteroid he discovered,[1] is named after the Attic form of the Greek Melissa, the bee, but its resemblance to the discoverer's name is not fortuitous.
[3] The conspicuous star cluster in the Coma Berenices constellation is commonly designated Mel 111 since it appeared in Melotte's 1915 catalogue of star clusters,[4] but not in Charles Messier's famous catalogue of deep sky objects or in the New General Catalogue since it was not proved to be a true cluster until 1938 by the astronomer R J Trumpler.
[5] Melotte was awarded the Jackson-Gwilt Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1909.
A collection of his papers is held at Cambridge University Library.