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§§ 199, 200] observations, executed with all the accuracy that his instrumental means permitted.

199. Flamsteed was succeeded as Astronomer Royal by Edmund Halley, whom we have already met with (chapter, § 176) as Newton's friend and helper.

Born in 1656, ten years after Flamsteed, he studied astronomy in his schooldays, and published a paper on the orbits of the planets as early as 1676. In the same year he set off for St. Helena (in latitude 16° S.) in order to make observations of stars which were too near the south pole to be visible in Europe. The climate turned out to be disappointing, and he was only able after his return to publish (1678) a catalogue of the places of 341 southern stars, which constituted, however, an important addition to precise knowledge of the stars. The catalogue was also remarkable as being the first based on telescopic observation, though the observations do not seem to have been taken with all the accuracy which his instruments rendered attainable. During his stay at St. Helena he also took a number of pendulum observations which confirmed the results obtained a few years before by Richer at Cayenne (chapter, § 161), and also observed a transit of Mercury across the sun, which occurred in November 1677.

After his return to England he took an active part in current scientific questions, particularly in those connected with astronomy, and made several small contributions to the subject. In 1684, as we have seen, he first came effectively into contact with Newton, and spent a good part of the next few years in helping him with the Principia.

200. Of his numerous contributions to astronomy, which touched almost every branch of the subject, his work on comets is the best known and probably the most important. He observed the comets of 1680 and 1682; he worked out the paths both of these and of a number of other recorded comets in accordance with Newton's principles, and contributed a good deal of the material contained in the sections of the Principia dealing with comets, particularly in the later editions. In 1705 he published a Synopsis of Cometary Astronomy in which no less than 24 cometary orbits were calculated. Struck by