John Bevis
John Bevis ( born November 10, 1695 in Old Sarum, Wiltshire, † November 6, 1771 ) was an English physician and amateur astronomer.
Life
Bevis enrolled on 4 April 1712 to study medicine at Christ Church, Oxford. After graduating in 1718 Bevis spent several years in France and Italy, and continued his studies of medicine. After England Bevis returned probably back around 1728 and operational in 1730 a thriving medical practice in London. There he worked as an amateur astronomer. He discovered the Crab Nebula in 1731, 27 years before Charles Messier independently rediscovered. He is said to have observed an occultation of Mercury by Venus on 28 May in 1737.
In 1738 he erected in Stoke Newington ( North London ) is a private observatory with which he compiled a star catalog to 1750 ( Uranographia Britannica ), from which a splendidly equipped star atlas should arise.
Bevis developed in 1748 together with his London physician colleague William Watson, the Leyden jar to its final form. The two gave up the liquid in the bottle and the bottle walls clad inside and out with tinfoil.
Bevis was from 1750 a member of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, 1765, he became a Fellow of the Royal Society. He was friends with James Bradley; his own observations confirmed Bradley's discovery of aberration.
Bevis died on November 6, 1771 from the effects of a fall from his telescope.
The Uranographia Britannica
Bevis was based on the works of Johann Bayer and John Flamsteed. He combined in his own position determinations with those that Flamsteed had won in Greenwich, and the observations of Edmond Halley of St. Helena. The star charts included 79 constellations and based on a catalog of 3550 stars (epoch 1746 - ecliptic coordinate system). It was totally new, that the Atlas Bevis ' not only represented the fixed stars, but also eleven " nebulous " objects: we call them today M1 ( Crab Nebula ), M31 ( Andromeda Galaxy ), M42 ( Orion Nebula ), M44 ( Praesepe ), M45 ( Pleiades ), M11, M13, M22, M35 and Omega Centauri and NGC 6231st
In 1748 he mentioned his work in a letter to Abbé Lacaille. He was able to raise the financing of the pressure of the star maps over 180 subscriptions. However, since the publisher ( John Neale ) went bankrupt, the manufactured 1748-1750 printing plates of the Atlas were confiscated and never officially released. However, some (incomplete ) Prints previously been made ( one of them sent Bevis to Messier, the 1784 mentioned him ). At the auction of his estate ( 1785), three nearly complete atlases and a number of sets of star maps were sold. 1786 were thrown ( only 51 cards including ) in bound form under the title "Atlas Celeste " on the market star card sets. They give no indication of John Bevis; the " publisher " is unknown.
By 1981, the Atlas was almost completely forgotten. In 1998, the Manchester Astronomical Society made a newly discovered copy on CD -Rom to the public.