Abstract
During the 1868 eclipse, Janssen and his French colleagues faced tough competition from their British counterparts. Indeed, the success of the 1868 eclipse was partly due to the meticulously organized expeditions led by the British astronomers. And most of the credit for that goes to James F. Tennant, who had first drawn the ‘astronomers’ attention to the eclipse. It was on his behest—after his papers and reports on the eclipse were published—that the Royal Astronomical Society arranged for instruments and personnel to carry out observations.
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Notes
- 1.
John Keay, The Great Arc: The Dramatic Tale of how India was Mapped and Everest Was Named (HarperCollins: 2000).
- 2.
James F. Tennant, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 17 (1856), 32.
- 3.
Tennant wrote in his 1856 paper: ‘I propose… a shallow reservoir for oil, having a narrow cylindrical tube rising out of it, in which works a piston urged by a weight. The reservoir is to be open downwards, by which pressure will be transmitted by the oil… and the same pressure will assist in lubrication. We may then make this pressure relieve any amount of weight within the limits I shall point out…’ These are probably the first recorded proposal for hydraulic weight relief in telescopes.
- 4.
C. Ball, The History of the Indian Mutiny, Vol 3 (London Printing and Publishing Co. :1858), 499.
- 5.
General Outram, the then British Resident, cited him as one of the officers deserving honourable mention.
- 6.
James F. Tennant, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 18 (1858), 287.
- 7.
James F. Tennant, “On the solar eclipse of 1868, August 17,” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 27 (1867), 79.
- 8.
He was not new to such calculations, as he had earlier published the timings of an annular eclipse in 1856. (“Annular Solar Eclipse, Sept. 18, 1857,” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 17 (1856),18.)
- 9.
James F. Tennant, “On the eclipse of August 1868,” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 27 (1867), 173.
- 10.
E. Weiss, “Remarks on the total solar eclipse of August 17th, 1868,” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 27 (1867), 305.
- 11.
John Herschel to George Stokes, 5 May 1867, in Memoir and Scientific Correspondence of the Late Sir George Gabriel Stokes, Volume I, ed. Joseph Larmor (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1971; 1907): 211.
- 12.
William Huggins to George Stokes, 15 May 1867, Stokes papers, Add MS 7656.H1112, University of Cambridge Library.
- 13.
Browning popularised the use of reflectors and had a flourishing business at 63 Strand, London. He mounted With’s mirrors on altazimuth and equatorial mounts and sold them at reasonable prices that were within reach of ordinary amateurs.
- 14.
James F. Tennant, “Report on the total eclipse of the Sun, August 17–18, 1868,” Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 37 (1869), 29.
- 15.
Ibid., 15.
- 16.
James F. Tennant, “Memorandum on Preparations for Observing the Total Eclipse of the Sun on August 18, 1868,” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol 27 (1867), 323.
- 17.
James F. Tennant, 1869, ibid, 5.
- 18.
Norman R. Pogson, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 8 (1847), 12.
- 19.
D. Jones, “Norman Pogson and the definition of stellar magnitude,” Astronomical Society of the Pacific Leaflets (1967), 10.
- 20.
V. Reddy, K. Snedegar, R. K. Balasubramanian, “Scaling the magnitude: the fall and rise of N. R. Pogson,” Journal of the British Astronomical Association, Vol. 117 (2007), 237.
- 21.
Ibid., 240.
- 22.
Tennant apparently resigned on account of low pay (ibid, 240).
- 23.
George Airy to Manuel Johnson, 1854 October 30, Royal Greenwich Observatory Archives 6.212, 380.
- 24.
Pogson to Airy, 1860 December 31, RGO Archives 6.146, file 6, 215–216.
- 25.
V. Reddy, K. Snedegar, R. K. Balasbramanianm, 2007, ibid, 241.
- 26.
Pogson to Airy, 1862 May 13, RGO 6.147, 114–115.
- 27.
Pogson to Airy, 1863 January 26, RGO 6.147, 137–140.
- 28.
Pogson to Airy, 1864 May 31, RGO 6.148, 140–145.
- 29.
Ibid.
- 30.
Pogson to Airy, 1876 Dec 2, RGO archives, as quoted in S. M. R. Ansari, “The establishment of observatories and the socio-economic conditions of scientific work in nineteenth century India,” Indian Journal of History of Science, Vol. 13 (1978), 62–71.
- 31.
Norman R. Pogson, Report of the Government astronomer: upon the proceedings of the observatory, in connexion with the total eclipse of the sun on August 18, 1868, as observed at Masulipatam, Vunpurthy, Madras, and other stations in southern India (Madras:1868), 1.
- 32.
Ibid., 2.
- 33.
Even for spectroscopic observations, he failed to understand the hype behind the eclipse, he noted: ‘…The spectroscope… was of course the general inducement which led so many observers so far from home, when by waiting another year or so they might have had much nearer and more convenient opportunities of witnessing similar phenomena.’ (ibid, 2).
- 34.
Ibid., 9.
- 35.
Ibid.,10.
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Nath, B.B. (2013). James F. Tennant, Soldier Turned Astronomer. In: The Story of Helium and the Birth of Astrophysics. Astronomers' Universe. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5363-5_7
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