William Lassell
| William Lassell | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
18 June 1799 Bolton, England |
| Died | 5 October 1880 (aged 81) Maidenhead, England |
| Fields | Astronomer |
| Known for | Discovered Triton, Hyperion, Ariel and Umbriel moons |
| Notable awards | Royal Medal (1858) |
William Lassell, FRS FRSE FRSL FRAS (18 June 1799 – 5 October 1880) was an English merchant and astronomer. He is remembered for his improvements to the Reflecting telescope and his ensuing planetary discoveries.
William Lassell was born in Bolton, Lancashire, a town west of Manchester. He was educated first in Bolton then at Rochdale Academy. After the death of his father, he was apprenticed from 1814 to 1821 to a merchant in Liverpool. He then made his fortune as a beer brewer, which enabled him to indulge his interest in astronomy. He built an observatory at his house "Starfield" in West Derby, a suburb of Liverpool. There he had a 24-inch (610 mm) reflector telescope, for which he pioneered the use of an equatorial mount for easy tracking of objects as the Earth rotates. He ground and polished the mirror himself, using equipment he constructed. The observatory was later (1854) moved further out of Liverpool, to Bradstone.
In 1846 Lassell discovered Triton, the largest moon of Neptune, just 17 days after the discovery of Neptune itself by German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle. In 1848 he independently co-discovered Hyperion, a moon of Saturn. In 1851 he discovered Ariel and Umbriel, two moons of Uranus.
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