John Brett, Pre Raphaelite painter and Astronomer with a Cooke

 John Brett 1831-1902 was a Pre Raphaelite painter and an astronomer. Brett was born in Bletchingley, Surrey. He was elected to the Royal Astronomical society on June 9^th 1871 but had a lifelong interest in astronomy.

He built a very strange house in Keswick Road, Putney, London where on the roof he had a 4 inch Cooke telescope this was the Matthew Equatorial owned by the Royal Astronomical Society. I am not sure why it is so called. The 4 inch Cooke was mounted on a solid brick pier on the top of the house with the pier going right down to the foundation level of the house. He also owned a 3 inch Cooke refractor. I am not sure of the age of either telescope.

The 4 inch Cooke was used by Brett to draw the crater Copernicus which appeared on page 1 and is illustration 1 of the Royal Astronomical Society Observatory journal which was published on April 20^th 1877. In the journal the drawing is labelled as being made using a refractor by Cooke suggesting that it was a pre-1857 instrument.

Both telescopes were used to observe the transit of Mercury on May 6^th 1878 with Brett using the 4 inch and his assistant Walter Pye using the 3 inch Cooke. Most of his observations using these two Cooke telescopes were of either the planets or the Moon.

His largest telescope was an 11 inch Browning reflector which also used from the roof of his house. He used the 1838 vintage 6.7 inch Sheepshanks equatorial at Greenwich to draw the great comet of 1882 and in 1874 Brett had the opportunity to use the 24 inch reflector owned by William Lassells to observe Jupiter.