Arthur Frederick Bennet (1871-1937) was by profession an engineer. The son of John Bennett ship owner of Grove House, Goole East Yorkshire. Although a Yorkshireman his astronomical activities were made while living at Leiston in Suffolk.
He was apprenticed at Earles Shipbuilding & engineering Co in Hull. In 1902 he left Earls and became general manager of Williams & Robinson at Rugby. In 1921 the firm amalgamated with the English Electric Company, where he remained until it went into receivership in 1932. His colleagues at Willian & Robinson presented him with a 3 inch Watson refractor telescope.
He may have already had an interest in astronomy and hence to gift of the Watson telescope.
He would soon get a larger telescope, it was sometime before 1924 that he acquired a 6 inch Cooke & Some telescope. I don’t know where he obtained this instrument from. We know that this instrument was used to observe the transit of Mercury on May 7th 1924. A transit occurs when a planet close to the Sun than the Earth passes in n front of the Sun. This only happens to Mercury and Venus.
His main area of interest was the Sun and in particular spectroscopic studies of solar prominences. This as done using equipment attached to the Cooke telescope. In addition to solar work Bennett also used cameras mounted on the Cooke telescope to look for comets, asteroids and other faint objects.
There were two transits of Mercury visible in the 1920s and Bennett observed both of them. The first I have already mentioned in 1924 the second in 1927. He did try to observe the total eclipse of the Sun on June 29th 1927 from Leyburn in Yorkshire. Sadly it was cloudy. His solar observations would carry on until 1929. On of his last major contributions were of observations of Nova Hercules in 1934 which had been discovered by JPM Prentice
Arthur Bennett died on May 14th 1937.
www.theramblingastronomer.co.uk
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