- William Lassell
Infobox Scientist
name = William Lassell
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birth_date =June 18 1799
birth_place =Bolton ,England
death_date =October 5 1880
death_place =Maidenhead ,England
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field =Astronomer
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known_for = Discovered Triton, Hyperion,
Ariel and Umbriel moons
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footnotes =William Lassell (
June 18 1799 –October 5 1880 ) was an Englishastronomer .Born in
Bolton , he made his fortune as a beer brewer, which enabled him to indulge his interest inastronomy . He built an observatory nearLiverpool with a convert|24|in|mm|sing=on reflectortelescope , for which he pioneered the use of anequatorial mount for easy tracking of objects as the earth rotates. He ground and polished the mirror himself, using equipment he constructed.In 1846 Lassell discovered Triton, the largest moon of Neptune, just 17 days after the discovery of Neptune itself by German astronomer
Johann Gottfried Galle . In 1848 he independently co-discovered Hyperion, a moon of Saturn. In 1851 he discovered Ariel and Umbriel, two new moons of Uranus.When Queen Victoria visited
Liverpool in 1851, Lassell was the only local she specifically requested to meet.In 1855, he built a convert|48|in|mm|sing=on telescope, which he installed in
Malta because of the better observing conditions compared to England.He won the
Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1849, and served as its president for two years starting in 1870.Lassell died in
Maidenhead in 1880. Upon his death, he left a fortune of £80,000 (equivalent to millions of American dollars by today's standards).Lassell crater on the
Moon , a crater onMars and a ring of Neptune are named in his honour.External links
* [http://www.mikeoates.org/lassell/ Biography and other topics]
* [http://www.klima-luft.de/steinicke/ngcic/persons/lassell.htm Short biography and pictures]Obituaries
* [http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/seri/AN.../0098//0000108.000.html AN 98(1881) 108] (in German)
* [http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?journal=MNRAS&year=%3F%3F%3F%3F&volume=..41&letter=.&db_key=AST&page_ind=189&plate_select=NO&data_type=GIF&type=SCREEN_GIF&classic=YES MNRAS 41(1881) 188]
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