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Ric
31-01-2008, 01:05 AM
Hi all, I came accross a great find today at a second hand book fair.

It was both volumes of "Celestial Objects for common telescopes" by the Reverend T.W. Webb. It was first published in 1859. The sixth edition in 1917 contained revisions by the Reverend T.E Espin.

These two volume are a 1962 paperback reprint of the sixth edition but has been revised for Epoch 2000 by the then director of AAVSO Margaret W Mayall.

It contains a list of some 4000 objects with a lot of attention being given to double stars which I presume must have been a favourite of T.W. Webb.

His observations were mainly done with a "Achromatic" refractor described as of fair defining quality and with an aperture of three and seven tenths inches and a focal length of five and a half feet.

So far volume 1 has been a fascinating of amateur astronomy as it stood in 1859 while volume 2 is a list with descriptions of double stars and DSO's for all the constellations.

The princely sum for these two gems was $6.

Cheers all :)

xelasnave
04-02-2008, 01:00 PM
What a wonderful find Ric I hope Tailwag notices this.
alex

ving
04-02-2008, 02:09 PM
sounds like a good find to me :)

astroron
04-02-2008, 06:11 PM
Lucky you Ric, you carn't get them even from the Webb Society.:(
You might be interested in joining the society:thumbsup:
Ron

Ric
04-02-2008, 09:42 PM
Hi Ron, you've caught me out with the Webb Society. I didn't know that one existed.

It sounds interesting though, I have to do a web search.

Cheers

Ric
06-02-2008, 06:47 PM
Now I have my LPI up and working I intend to chase down and have a go at imaging the doubles that are listed.

Ron, I found the Webb Society. What a fascinating web site, I've had to bookmark it for further reading.

Cheers

astroron
06-02-2008, 11:40 PM
Cheers Ric:thumbsup:
Save up your pennies and join,we need all the Southern Hemisphere members we can get;)
Ron