Page:History of the Royal Astronomical Society (1923).djvu/95

 1830-40] ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY 77 Of other amateurs active between 1830 and 1840 we must mention George Bishop, whose observatory on the Inner Circle, Regent's Park, London, though started in 1836, belongs more to the next two decades. To Dawes, Hussey, Wrottesley, and Pearson, we have already alluded. There were not in those days (as there are now) many people deeply interested in astronomy, who, without possessing anything worthy of being called an observatory, yet owned a small telescope or two and got hold of a useful field of work. Very little, if any, attention was paid to variable stars ; and the study of the surface-markings of the planets was quite neglected. Of silver ed-glass reflectors there w r ere none ; and the possessors of small refractors did not realise that Olbers had never possessed anything bigger than a 3 f -inch refractor (or " achromatic," as it would have been called in England), and that Beer's and Madler's map of the moon and their drawings of the planets were made with a telescope of a similar size. The English observer with small telescopes had not yet arrived on the scene, but when he did come, his name was to be legion. But a British amateur astronomer was during this decade hard at work making specula of as large a size as possible. William, third Earl of Rosse, during this decade succeeded in making mirrors three feet in diameter, first one cast in a number of pieces (mounted in 1835) and afterwards another solid one, mounted in 1839. His further magnificent success in making a speculum of six feet aperture belongs to the next decade. Next to John Herschel, the most conspicuous of English non- official astronomers was Francis Baily, of whom it is not too much to say that he was the central figure of our Society during the first twenty-four years of its existence. In recognition of what the Society owed to him, a number of Fellows subscribed in 1838 and presented a portrait of him to the Society. It has been shown in the foregoing pages how he, after taking a leading part in the foundation of the Society, endeavoured to encourage amateur observers by the publication of ephemerides and tables, while he, after years of labour, had a principal share in the reform of the national ephemeris. We have also seen how he was one of the first to grapple successfully with the problem of forming the cor- rections of a star's place for aberration and nutation into simple formulae, and how this led him to the formation of the Society's catalogue. This work on star-places led him also to prepare a new and corrected edition of Mayer's catalogue. The original observations on which this was founded were published by the Board of Longitude in 1826. Baily did not reduce them anew, but wherever the positions differed too much from those of Bradley or Piazzi, he searched the observations to find the cause of the