William Lassell and the Rings of Neptune

On 23rd September, 1846 the planet Neptune was discovered. Using
the calculations of a French mathematician, Urbain Le Verrier, the
German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle and his student assistant,
Heinrich Louis d'Arrest, saw Neptune where it had been predicted.

Only days later, William Lassell, a successful brewer with a passion for
astronomy, discovered the great moon of Neptune, Triton. That same
evening he also recorded an observation of what he suspected
was a ring around Neptune. His belief in this, and subsequent
observations, stayed with him until 1852 when he confirmed a flaw in
the design of his telescope mirror mountings. This caused the mirror
to flex and create a distortion that he had mistaken for a ring around
the planet.

Read more about William Lassell by clicking here.

The full story of this episode is also included in this new book,
'The Haunted Observatory' by Richard Baum.

 

To illustrate this story, we built a model of Lassell's
observatory to house the 24 inch reflecting telescope
that we built for Richard Baum's new book.

Although the detail of what this telescope looked like is
scarce, there is enough to piece together a reasonable
reconstruction.

We built just over half of the observatory, giving us room
to cleanly pull the camera back from the opening in the
dome and reveal the telescope.

A painting of a dense starfield and a single keylight
suggesting a bright moonlit night completed the shot.
In reality you would be hard-pressed to observe faint
objects in bright moonlight, but we plead artistic license
for this one!

Out of interest, the castings for the original telescope
were done at the Bridgewater Foundry in Patricroft,
under the supervision of Lassell's friend, James Nasmyth.

Nasmyth was also the inventor of the steam-hammer.

 

 

Click Here for The Final Shot

 
 

 

Click Here for Voyager 2 at Neptune

 

Click Here for Williamson's Tunnels