“The construction worker reported the work on the top floor of the house was proceeding fine until they got to the staircase. Then it was a downward spiral.”
Thomas HendersonDied 23 Nov 1844 at age 45 (born 28 Dec 1798).Scottish astronomer, the first Scottish Astronomer Royal (1834), who was first to measure the parallax of a star (Alpha Centauri, observed at the Cape of Good Hope) in 1831-33, but delayed publication of his results until Jan 1839. By then, a few months earlier, both Friedrich Bessel and Friedrich Struve had been recognized as first for their measurements of stellar parallaxes. Alpha Centauri can be observed from the Cape, though not from Britain. It is now known to be the nearest star to the Sun, but is still so distant that its light takes 4.5 years to reach us. As Scottish Astronomer Royal in 1834, he worked diligently at the Edinburgh observatory for ten years, making over 60,000 observations of star positions before his death in 1844.«[Image: Memorial tablet at the City Observatory, Edinburgh. No proper portrait of him exists] |
