4 - Stargazer at World’s End

Summary

From 1833 to 1838, John Herschel relocated himself, his growing family, and one of his father’s largest telescopes to the British colony of Cape Town, in South Africa, with the intent of undertaking the most thorough observational study of the southern heavens ever made. This endeavor was driven in part by his desire to complete the astronomical work begun by his father William, whose own astronomical surveys had been confined to the northern hemisphere. The southern heavens had been previously mapped by Edmond Halley (1656–1742) and the Abbé Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille (1713–62), but their surveys were primarily undertaken for navigational purposes and with comparatively small telescopes.