Feb. 24th 2006 Gerard Gilligan

William Lassell 1799 - 1880
Gerard along with others had arrived early and set up his Carrousel slide projector for the evening's talk about one of the Northwest's beer brewers who had used his amazing wealth to support his interest in astronomy. Through the presentation, Gerard patiently and eloquently painted a picture of a shrewd businessman who used the profits from quenching the thirst of labourers demanded by the industrial revolution in the Northwest of England to build a 9, 24 and 48 inch telescopes during an active observing career lasting over half a century.

Whereas astronomical research these days is the product of funding councils, university departments and collaborative work performed by numerous teams often geographically distributed across several countries, William Lassell was pretty much a one man operation. He made a huge contribution to telescope and mirror making, detailed visual observations of the Sun, the planets and by using Malta as an observing location set the trend for positioning obseravtories high on montains far from light polution. On the evening of October 10^th 1846 with his home made 24 inch telescope he discovered Triton, the largest satellite of Neptune. Although born in Bolton, perhaps he he shouldbe considered as "Galileo of Liverpool". He put Liverpool on the world map long before Liverpool FC and the Beatles.

If you live in the Merseyside area you can listen to Gerard at least twice a month, usually on a Wednesday between 18.00 and 19.00 on BBC radio Merseyside. Of course, you can listen on-line http://www.bbc.co.uk/england/radiomerseyside/ from anywhere. His next slot is on 1st of March.

Finally, Mike Oates had also turned up early and setup his box of tricks to make an audio record of this evening's presentation. So if you missed the lecture, you will soon have access to a high quality audio CD of it. Incidentally, Mike also maintains a website with more information on the remarkable life and work of William Lassell at http://www.mikeoates.org/lassell/.