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Hordern House

RICHARDSON, William A Catalogue of 7385 Stars, chiefly in the Southern Hemisphere. London, William Clowes & Sons. 1835
Quarto, with a frontispiece plan "Parramatta Observatory"; contemporary half calf, joints renewed; a few spots but overall a fine presentation copy.

The first Australian astronomical work and the first attempt at recording the Southern Hemisphere skies since Lacaille's work done from the Cape of Good Hope during the 1750s. This superb association copy was presented to the Library of the Royal Society of Edinburgh by its former president, General Sir Thomas Makdougall Brisbane on 10 July 1856.

In 1822 Brisbane had established a private observatory behind Government House at Parramatta. Brisbane, who had succeeded Lachlan Macquarie as Governor of New South Wales, was a keen astronomer and brought with him to Australia two assistant astronomers, James Dunlop from Scotland and Charles Rumker from Germany, who was to become the colony's first Government astronomer. In 1828 the Royal Astronomical Society presented Brisbane with its Gold Medal, 'accompanied with the strongest expressions of our admiration for your patriotic and princely support to Astronomy in regions so remote... Your name will be identified with the future glories of that colony in the ages yet to come, as the father of her science...' (Under the Southern Cross, p. 20).

Under Brisbane's instructions, Rumker and Dunlop set about cataloguing the stars of the Southern Hemisphere as seen from the Observatory, and in just over two years made 40,000 observations of over 7000 stars. Their work was finally published in London in 1835 under the authorship of William Richardson of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich.
Ferguson, 2012.

$A5500
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