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| Umbriel |
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| Ariel |
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n– 1851
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nnWilliamnLassell was apprenticed to a merchant in Liverpool, England, and thennhe made a fortune as a beer brewer. But he is known for his hobby.
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nnSomenhobby! n
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nnLassellnwas interested in astronomy, and, remember, he made a fortune, so henhad plenty of money. He was able to build an observatory nearnLiverpool, and he himself ground and polished a 24-inch mirror fornits telescope. He was the first to use a particular “equatorialnmount” to easily track objects in the sky as the earth rotates.n(Remember, although all the stars and planets seem to cross the skynas the night passes, it is really the earth spinning that createsnthis apparent motion.) n
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nnUsing his telescope, Lassell discovered Triton, the largest moon of Neptune—just 17 daysnafter Neptune itself was discovered! That was in 1846. In 1848, hendiscovered Hyperion, a moon of Saturn (although on the same night,nanother astronomer independently made the same discovery). Finally,non this day in 1951, Lassell discovered two new moons of Uranus. n
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| Uranus and its rings and moons… Its axis of rotation is tipped so that its north and south pole are where most planets’ equators are… |
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nnUranus’snmoons (we now know of 27!) are named after characters from the worksnof Shakespeare and Alexander Pope. Ariel is a sky spirit innShakespeare’s ThenTempest,nand Umbriel is a character in a poem by Alexander Pope.
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nnBynthe way…
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nnInncase you think that William Lassell spent his entire fortune onnbuilding an observatory and telescope…no, not so much. In 1855 henbuilt another telescope, this one twice as large, and had itninstalled in Malta, in the Mediterranean, where the weather andntherefore skies are better for observation. When he died in 1880, henstill left a fortune equal to millions of U.S. dollars of today!
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