William Rutter Dawes

For other people named William Dawes, see William Dawes (disambiguation).
William Rutter Dawes

William R. Dawes
Born (1799-03-19)19 March 1799
West Sussex
Died 15 February 1868(1868-02-15) (aged 68)
Citizenship English
Fields Astronomy
Notable awards Gold Medal

William Rutter Dawes (19 March 1799 – 15 February 1868) was an English astronomer.

Biography

Dawes was born in West Sussex, the son of William Dawes, also an astronomer, and Judith Rutter.[1]

Dawes was a clergyman who made extensive measurements of double stars as well as observations of planets. He was a friend of William Lassell. He was nicknamed "eagle eye". He set up his private observatory at his home in Haddenham, Buckinghamshire. One of his telescopes, an eight-inch refractor by Cooke, survives at the Cambridge Observatory where it is known as the Thorrowgood Telescope.

He made extensive drawings of Mars during its 1864 opposition. In 1867, Richard Anthony Proctor made a map of Mars based on these drawings.

He won the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1855.

Dawes craters on the Moon and Dawes crater on Mars are named after him, as is a gap within Saturn's C Ring.

An optical phenomenon, the Dawes limit, is named for him.

Selected writings

References

  1. ↑ Hockey, Thomas (2009). The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer Publishing. ISBN 978-0-387-31022-0. Retrieved 22 August 2012.

Further reading

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 7/22/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.