Home > Edward James Stone

He was born in London. Educated at the City of London School, he obtained a studentship at King's College, London, and in 1856 a scholarship at Queens' College, Cambridge, graduated as fifth wrangler in 1859, and was immediately elected fellow of his college. The following year he succeeded the Rev. Robert Main as chief assistant at the Royal Greenwich Observatory, and at once undertook the fundamental task of improving astronomical constants. The most important of these, the sun's mean parallax, was at that time subject to considerable uncertainty.

He obtained a value for the solar parallax by observations of Mars in 1860Events March 6 Abraham Lincoln speaks against slavery in New Haven, Connecticut April 3 The Pony Express makes its first run. May 9 The Constitutional Union Party holds its convention and nominates John Bell for President of the United States. May 13 Batt and 1862Events January-March January 10 End of term for John Gately Downey, 7th Governor of California. He is succeeded by Amasa Leland Stanford. January 30 The first American ironclad warship, the USS Monitor is launched. February 1 Julia Ward Howe's " Battle Hy. He later refined his estimate by examining observations of the transit of VenusThis article is about the astronomical phenomenon. For other meanings, see Transit of Venus (disambiguation). 2004 transit of Venus The_transit_of_venus A transit of Venus across the Sun takes place when the planet Venus passes directly between the Sun an of 1769Events Baron Wolfgang von Kempelen exhibits the " Mechanical Turk", a chess-playing machine May 14 Charles III of Spain sends Spanish missionaries, who found California missions in San Diego, Santa Barbara, San Francisco and Monterey and begin the settlem. He also studied the lunar parallax, and determined the mass of the MoonFor other moons in the solar system see natural satellite. For other uses see Moon (disambiguation). The Moon is the only natural satellite of Earth. It has no formal name other than "The Moon" although it is occasionally called Luna ( Latin for moon to d, and obtained a value for the constant of nutationNutation is a slight irregular motion (etymologically a "nodding") in the axis of rotation of a planet, due to the fact that the tidal forces which cause precession of the equinoxes vary over time so that the speed of precession is not constant. In the ca.

He was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical SocietyThe Gold Medal is the highest award of the Royal Astronomical Society. In the early years, more than one medal was often awarded in a year, but by 1833 only one medal was being awarded per year. This caused a problem when Neptune was discovered in 1846, b in 18691869 is a common year starting on Friday (link will take you to calendar). Events March 1 North German Confederation issues 10 gr and 30gr value stamps, printed on goldbeater's skin May 10 Transcontinental Railroad completed at Promontory, Utah. May 15 Wo, and on the resignation of Sir Thomas Maclear in 1870 he was appointed Her Majesty's astronomer at the Cape of Good Hope. His first task on taking up this post was the reduction and publication of a large mass of observations left by his predecessor, from a selected portion of which (those made 1856– 1860) he compiled a catalogue of 1159 stars. His principal work was, however, a catalogue of 12,441 stars to the 7th magnitude between the South Pole and 25°S declination, which was practically finished by the end of 1878 and published in 1881.

Shortly after the death of Main on May 9 1878, Stone was appointed to succeed him as Radcliffe Observer at Oxford, and he left the Cape on May 27 1879. At Oxford he extended the Cape observations of stars to the 7th magnitude from 25°S declination to the equator, and collected the results in the Radcliffe Catalogue for 1890, which contains the places of 6424 stars.

Stone observed the transit of Venus of 1874 at the Cape, and organized the government expeditions for the corresponding event in 1882. He was elected president of the Royal Astronomical Society ( 1882– 1884), and he was the first to recognize the importance of the old observations accumulated at the Radcliffe Observatory by Hornsby, Robertson and Rigaud. He successfully observed the total solar eclipse of August 8, 1896 at Novaya Zemlya, and intended a voyage to India for the eclipse of 1898, but died suddenly at the Radcliffe Observatory . The number of his astronomical publications exceeds 150, but his reputation depends mainly on his earlier work at Greenwich and his two great star catalogues—the Cape Catalogue for 1880 and the Radcliffe Catalogue for 1890.

This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica. 1911 Britannica