Astronomical and Meteorological Workers in New South Wales
Introduction
Lieutenant Dawes
Captain Flinders
Admiral Phillip Parker King
Sir Thomas MacDougall Brisbane
Dr. Charles Stargard Rumker
James Dunlop
P. E. De Strzelecki
Captain J. C. Wickham
Rev. W. B. Clarke, M.A.
Rev. A. Glennie
E. C. Close
Sir William Macarthur
J. Boucher
S. H. Officer
John Wyndham
William Stanley Jevons
Establishment of Meteorological Observatories
Votes and Proceedings, N.S.W., 1848.
Appendix A.
Appendix B.
Appendix C.
Appendix D.
Appendix E.
Appendix F.
Appendix G.
Appendix H.
Appendix I.
Appendix J.
Appendix K.
Appendix L.
Appendix M.
Appendix N.
Appendix O.
Appendix P.
Appendix Q.
Appendix R.
Appendix S.
Appendix T.
Appendix U.
Endnotes
Index
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Dunlop further says:—" 'The places of the small stars in the nebulæ, major and minor, and also those accompanying Eta Robur Caroli (Eta argus), I ascertained by the mural circle in the year 1825, at which time I was preparing to commence a general survey of the Southern Hemisphere." The nebulæ are arranged in order of polar distance for the Epoch 1827, and in a paper read before the Royal Astronomical Society (p. 258) on May 8th, 1828 he says in a letter to Sir Thomas Brisbane:—"You are aware that during your administration of the Government of the Colony of New South Wales, my time and attention were wholly devoted in your employ to the Parramatta Observatory, in the miscellaneous observations which occurred, and principally collecting materials towards the formation of a catalogue of stars; and your departure from the Colony prevented me from pursuing that branch further. Finding myself in possession of telescopes[12] (a nine-inch reflector, nine-feet focus) which I considered capable of adding considerably to our knowledge of the nebulæ and double stars in that portion of the heavens, I resolved to remain behind to prosecute my favorite pursuits in collecting materials towards the formation of a catalogue of nebulæ, &c. In the case of stars marked with an asterisk their positions, declinations, &c., are the result of micrometrical measurements with the forty-six inch[13] achromatic telescope, mounted on the equatorial stand, which you left with me. The micrometers were constructed by myself, consisting of a parallel line micrometer, the screws of which I bestowed great pains upon, and which I consider very excellent and uniform."
It is evident from these extracts that Dunlop's survey of the heavens was projected before Sir Thomas left or resigned his authority on December 1st, 1825, and that he lent Dunlop the forty-six-inch Equatorial from the Parramatta Observatory which belonged to the set of instruments which he brought out.
The estimate in which Dunlop was held in England at this time is evident from the fact that the Royal Astronomical Society gave him its highest honour, a Gold Medal, in presenting which, on the 8th February, 1828, Sir John Herschel said:—"I have now, gentlemen, to call your attention to the award of another gold medal, this time to Mr. Dunlop, Sir Thomas Brisbane's assistant, who went out with him in 1821, and who has since the middle of 1823, when his companion, Mr. Rumker, left the Observatory, remained in sole charge of the instruments, and up to the departure of Sir Thomas from the colony, continued an uninterrupted series of observations with a care and diligence seldom equalled and never surpassed The records of this Society bear sufficient testimony to the merits of Mr. Rumker, and to our sense of them. But in Mr. Dunlop were combined qualities, rendering him, above all others, the very individual fitted for the duties imposed on him—zealous, active, ready—but above all (and the combination is not an ordinary one) industrious and methodical. In the vast mass of observations made and registered by him all is equable and smooth as if the observations had been made at a sitting. No long intervals of inactivity; nothing hurried or sketchy, but the same painstaking laborious filling in pervading the whole and shewing that the observers whole heart was in his work.
People in Bright Sparcs - Dunlop, James; Rümker, Christian Carl Ludwig; Russell, Henry Chamberlain
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