The Earl of Rosse | |
|---|---|
 | |
| 27th President of the Royal Society | |
| In office 1848–1854 | |
| Preceded by | Spencer Compton |
| Succeeded by | John Wrottesley |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1800-06-17)17 June 1800 York, England |
| Died | 31 October 1867(1867-10-31) (aged 67) Monkstown, County Dublin, Ireland |
| Alma mater | Trinity College Dublin Magdalen College, Oxford |
| Occupation | Engineer |
| Notable work | Leviathan of Parsonstown |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 13, includingLawrence andCharles |
| Parent(s) | Lawrence Parsons, 2nd Earl of Rosse Alice Lloyd |
| Awards |
|
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Astronomy |
| Institutions | Birr Castle |
William Parsons, 3rd Earl of RosseKP FRS (17 June 1800 – 31 October 1867), was an Englishengineer andastronomer. He built several giant telescopes.[1][2]His 72-inch telescope, built in 1845 and colloquially known as the "Leviathan of Parsonstown", was the world's largest telescope, in terms of aperture size, until the early 20th century.[3] From April 1807 until February 1841, he wasstyled asBaron Oxmantown.
He was born inYork, England, the son ofSir Lawrence Parsons, later 2nd Earl of Rosse, and Alice Lloyd.[4] He was educated atTrinity College Dublin andMagdalen College, Oxford, graduating with first-class honours in mathematics in 1822. He inherited anearldom and a large estate inKing's County (now County Offaly) in Ireland when his father,Lawrence, 2nd Earl of Rosse, died in February 1841.
Lord Rosse marriedMary Field, daughter of John Wilmer Field, on 14 April 1836. They had thirteen offspring, of which four sons survived to adulthood:[5]
In addition to his astronomical interests, Rosse served as a Member of Parliament (MP) forKing's County from 1821 to 1834, president of theBritish Association in 1843–1844,[6] anIrish representative peer after 1845, president of theRoyal Society (1848–1854), andchancellor of the University of Dublin (Trinity College Dublin) (1862–1867). He was appointedColonel of the disembodiedKing's County Royal Rifle Militia (a regiment formerly commanded by his father) from 19 June 1834 and was joined by his younger brother the Hon Lawrence Parsons asLieutenant-Colonel from 24 December 1847. When the regiment was next embodied, in 1852, the position of colonel had become an honorary post.[7]
During the 1840s, he had theLeviathan of Parsonstown built, a 72-inch (6 feet/1.83 m) telescope atBirr Castle,Parsonstown, County Offaly. The 72-inch (1.8 m) telescope replaced a 36-inch (910 mm) telescope that he had built previously.He had to invent many of the techniques he used for constructing the Leviathan, both because its size was without precedent and because earlier telescope builders had guarded their secrets or had not published their methods. Details of the metal, casting, grinding and polishing of the 3-ton 'speculum' were presented in 1844 at theBelfast Natural History Society.[8] Rosse's telescope was considered a marvellous technical and architectural achievement, and images of it were circulated widely within the British Commonwealth. Building of the Leviathan began in 1842 and it was first used in 1845; regular use waited another two years, due to theGreat Irish Famine. It was the world's largest telescope, in terms of aperture size, until the early 20th century. Using this telescope Rosse saw and catalogued a large number of nebulae (including a number that would later be recognised as galaxies).[9][10]
Lord Rosse performed astronomical studies and discovered the spiral nature of somenebulae, today known to be spiralgalaxies. Rosse's telescope Leviathan was the first to reveal the spiral structure of M51, a galaxy nicknamed later as the "Whirlpool Galaxy", and his drawings of it closely resemble modern photographs.
TheCrab Nebula received its name based on a drawing made by Rosse in the early 1840s with his older 36-inch (91 cm) telescope in which it resembled a crab. A few years later, when the 72-inch (183 cm) telescope was in service, he (or one of his assistants) produced an improved drawing of a considerably different appearance, but the original name continued to be used.[11]
A main component of Rosse's nebular research was his attempt to resolve thenebular hypothesis, which posited that planets and stars were formed bygravity acting on gaseous nebulae. Rosse himself did not believe that nebulas were truly gaseous, arguing rather that they were made of such an amount of fine stars that most telescopes could not resolve them individually (that is, he considered nebulas to be stellar in nature). In 1845 Rosse and his technicians claimed to have resolved theOrion nebula into its individual stars using the Leviathan, a claim which had considerable cosmological and even philosophical implications, as at the time there was considerable debate over whether or not the universe was "evolved" (in a pre-Darwinian sense), a concept which the nebular hypothesis supported and with which Rosse disagreed strongly. Rosse's primary opponent in this wasJohn Herschel, who used his own instruments to claim that the Orion nebula was a "true" nebula (i.e. gaseous, not stellar), and discounted Rosse's instruments as flawed (a criticism Rosse returned about Herschel's own). Eventually, neither man (nor telescope) could establish sufficiently scientific results to resolve the question (the convincing evidence for the gaseous nature of the nebula would be developed later fromWilliam Huggins'sspectroscopic evidence, though it would not immediately resolve the philosophical issues).
One of Rosse's telescope admirers wasThomas Langlois Lefroy, a fellow Irish MP, who said, "The planet Jupiter, which through an ordinary glass is no larger than a good star, is seen twice as large as the moon appears to the naked eye... But the genius displayed in all the contrivances for wielding this mighty monster even surpasses the design and execution of it. The telescope weighs sixteen tons, and yet Lord Rosse raised it single-handed off its resting place, and two men with ease raised it to any height."[12]
Lord Rosse's son published his father's findings, including the discovery of 226 NGC objects in the publicationObservations of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars Made With the Six-foot and Three-foot Reflectors at Birr Castle From the Year 1848 up to the Year 1878, Scientific Transactions of the Royal Dublin Society Vol. II, 1878.[13]
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Lord Rosse had a variety of optical reflecting telescopes built.[3][9] Rosse's telescopes used castspeculum metal ground parabolically and polished.[14]
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| Parliament of the United Kingdom | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Member of Parliament forKing's County 1821–1835 With:Thomas Bernard 1821–1833 Nicholas Fitzsimon 1833–1835 | Succeeded by |
| Political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Representative peer for Ireland 1845–1867 | Succeeded by |
| Academic offices | ||
| Preceded by | Chancellor of the University of Dublin 1862–1867 | Succeeded by |
| Professional and academic associations | ||
| Preceded by | 27thPresident of the Royal Society 1848–1854 | Succeeded by |
| Honorary titles | ||
| New title | Lord Lieutenant of King's County 1831–1867 | Succeeded by |
| Peerage of Ireland | ||
| Preceded by | Earl of Rosse 1841–1867 | Succeeded by |
