William Lassell 1799-1880
On October 5th 1880 the English astronomer
William Lassell died. He was born on
June 18th, 1799 in Bolton, Lancashire.
Although working in the brewing industry he had a great
interest in astronomy and in 1844 he constructed a 24 inch reflecting
telescope. With this telescope, the first of its size to be set in an
equatorial mounting, he discovered Triton the largest moon of Neptune on October
10th 1846, only 17 days after Neptune itself had been discovered.
In 1848 he jointly discovered the moon Hyperion which orbits
Saturn. Lassell discovered Ariel and Umbriel which orbit Uranus in 1851–52
while at Malta, and there in 1861 he erected a 48-inch reflector, which he used
to observe and catalogue hundreds of new nebulae.
He was elected a fellow of
the Royal Society of London in 1849 and was president of the Royal Astronomical
Society from 1870 to 1872.
No comments:
Post a Comment