Her Majesty's Astronomer at the Cape

Abstract

MR. DAVID GILL has been gazetted successor to Mr, E. J. Stone in the direction of the Royal Observatory, Cape of Good Hope. The discrimination exercised by the First Lord of the Admiralty in this appointment, we are confident will be appreciated and applauded by astronomers generally. Obtaining his first experience in practical astronomy in the Observatory at Aberdeen, and in a private observatory which he erected in the same place, Mr. Gill was so fortunate as to be associated with Lord Lindsay in the designs and details of the large observatory founded by this nobleman at Dun Echt m 1870, taking the position of chief of the staff. He thus became engaged in the organisation of the expedition to the Mauritius fitted out by Lord Lindsay for the observation of the transit of Venus, on which occasion advantage was taken of the circumstance of a heliometer forming part of the equipment to determine the sun's distance by measures of the planet Juno, being the first trial of the method, and attended with satisfactory results; the details of this work were published by Lord Lindsay as the joint work of himself and Mr. Gill. In connection with the same expedition, Mr. Gill arranged and personally conducted the whole of the chronometric and telegraphic longitude determinations connecting Berlin, Malta, Alexandria, Suez, Aden, Bombay, Seychelles, Reunion, Mauritius and Rodriguez. It was while engaged upon these operations that he undertook, at the request of the Khedive the measurement of the first base line of the geodetic survey of Egypt. In 1877 Mr. Gill laid before the Royal Astronomical Society a proposal to determine the sun's distance by heliometric observations of the planet Mars about the very favourable opposition of that year, Lord Lindsay lending his heliometer for the purpose. The proposal met with the support of the Astronomer-Royal and Council of this Society, and was further aided in its execution by a grant from the government funds in the hands of the Royal Society. The Island of Ascension was fixed upon as a favourable station for these observations, and Mr. Gill proceeded to Ascension in June, being occupied there about six months in the necessary preparations and carrying out of the scheme. The reductions are still proceeding, but in proof of the importance attached to this attempt to obtain a reliable value of the solar parallax and the interest felt by the leading astronomers of different nations in his work, it may be mentioned that on asking for aid in the accurate determination of the positions of the stars observed with Mars, his request was cordially acceded to at the following observatories:—Greenwich, Oxford, and Liverpool, Albany, U.S., Berlin, Cambridge, Mass., Cordoba (the national establishment of the Argentine Republic), Königsberg, Leipsic, Leyden, Melbourne, Paris, Pulkova (the Imperial Observatory of Russia), and Washington.