In:
Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, The Royal Society, Vol. 15, No. 1 ( 1960-07-31), p. 167-172
Abstract:
William Ball (or Balle as he signed himself in the Journal Book) was one of the enthusiastic amateurs with royalist sympathies and independent means who was present at the foundation meeting on 28 November 1660. He was the eldest son of Sir Peter Ball, Recorder of Exeter and Attorney General to Queen Henrietta Maria and to Queen Catherine. The exact date of his birth is uncertain, it was probably in 1627. Nothing is known of his early life, but as he lived for a time in the Temple he probably intended to follow his father’s profession. He became a keen astronomer with his own telescope and like Wren and Sir Paul Neile he was specially interested in the puzzling appearance of Saturn. We know of his work from the letters of Wallis to Huygens between 1656 and 1659 which contain records of his observations and his drawings of Saturn both of which were frequently cited by Huygens in support of his own view of the annular nature of the appendages of the planet. These vanish for the terrestrial observer every time the earth crosses the plane of Saturn’s ring, when part of this ring can be seen projected as a fascia or band upon the planet’s disc. To observe this accurately was a severe test of the quality of the telescopes available at this time, but Ball succeeded in discerning this elusive phenomenon. In letters to Huygens dated 29 May 1656, which never reached him and had to be repeated, and 22 December 1658 (1), Wallis reported that William Ball had already, in 1655, observed the fascia across Saturn’s disc, using a Roman telescope scarcely more than 12 feet long and supposed to have been constructed by Eustachio de Divinis.
Type of Medium:
Online Resource
ISSN:
0035-9149
DOI:
10.1098/rsnr.1960.0016
Language:
English
Publisher:
The Royal Society
Publication Date:
1960
detail.hit.zdb_id:
2092666-2
SSG:
11
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