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Alexander MacFarlane (judge)
Alexander MacFarlane, Fellow of the Royal Society, FRS ( – 23 August 1755) was a Scottish merchant, planter and astronomer. After graduating from the University of Glasgow in 1728, he emigrated to the British colony of Jamaica and became a prominent landowner and political figure. MacFarlane was appointed the colony's first Postmaster General in 1735 and elected to the House of Assembly of Jamaica for Saint Elizabeth Parish in 1754. At the time of his death, he owned multiple Sugar plantations in the Caribbean, sugar plantations and nearly 800 Slavery in the British and French Caribbean, slaves. MacFarlane was also an amateur astronomer who constructed observatories in Port Royal and Kingston, Jamaica, Kingston, equipped with a variety of instruments purchased from fellow astronomer Colin Campbell (astronomer), Colin Campbell. His astronomical observations, though limited in scope, resulted in MacFarlane being elected as a fellow of the Royal Society in 1746. Upon his death, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Fellow Of The Royal Society
Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the Fellows of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, including mathematics, engineering science, and medical science". Overview Fellowship of the Society, the oldest known scientific academy in continuous existence, is a significant honour. It has been awarded to :Fellows of the Royal Society, around 8,000 fellows, including eminent scientists Isaac Newton (1672), Benjamin Franklin (1756), Charles Babbage (1816), Michael Faraday (1824), Charles Darwin (1839), Ernest Rutherford (1903), Srinivasa Ramanujan (1918), Jagadish Chandra Bose (1920), Albert Einstein (1921), Paul Dirac (1930), Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1944), Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis (1945), Dorothy Hodgkin (1947), Alan Turing (1951), Lise Meitner (1955), Satyendra Nath Bose (1958), and Francis Crick (1959). More recently, fellow ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Viscount Of Arbuthnott
Viscount of Arbuthnott is a title in the Peerage of Scotland. It was created in 1641, along with the subsidiary title Lord Inverbervie, for Sir Robert Arbuthnott. The Viscount of Arbuthnott is the hereditary chief of Clan Arbuthnott. At the time of the 16th Viscount's death in 2012, the family held the genealogical record of being one of an unbroken male line living in the same spot for more than 800 years. Around 1188, William the Lion granted ancestor Hugh de Swinton the lands of Arbuthnott, where the family estate and clan association headquarters remain to this day. All Scottish viscounts have 'of' in their titles, contrary to English viscounts who are styled simply 'Viscount X'. However, most Scottish viscounts have now adopted the English practice; only the Viscount of Arbuthnott and, to a lesser extent, the Viscount of Oxfuird, continue to use 'of'. The family seat is Arbuthnott House, Arbuthnott, near Inverbervie in Kincardineshire, although the current Viscount a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Reflecting Telescope
A reflecting telescope (also called a reflector) is a telescope that uses a single or a combination of curved mirrors that reflect light and form an image. The reflecting telescope was invented in the 17th century by Isaac Newton as an alternative to the refracting telescope which, at that time, was a design that suffered from severe chromatic aberration. Although reflecting telescopes produce other types of optical aberrations, it is a design that allows for very large diameter Objective (optics), objectives. Almost all of the major telescopes used in astronomy research are reflectors. Many variant forms are in use and some employ extra optical elements to improve image quality or place the image in a mechanically advantageous position. Since reflecting telescopes use mirrors, the design is sometimes referred to as a catoptrics, catoptric telescope. From the time of Newton to the 1800s, the mirror itself was made of metalusually speculum metal. This type included Newton's first ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Zenith Telescope
A zenith telescope is a type of telescope that is designed to point straight up at or near the zenith. They are used for precision measurement of star positions, to simplify telescope construction, or both. A classic zenith telescope, also known as a zenith sector employs a strong altazimuth mount, fitted with levelling screws. Extremely sensitive levels are attached and the telescope has an eyepiece fitted with a Micrometer (device), micrometer. They are used for the measurement of small differences of zenith distance, and used in the determination of astronomic latitude. Other types of zenith telescopes include the Monument to the Great Fire of London, which includes a central shaft meant for use as a zenith telescope. High-precision (and fixed building) zenith telescopes were also used until the early 1980s to track Earth's north pole position e.g. Earth's rotation axis position (polar motion). Since then radio astronomy, radio astronomical quasar measurements (VLBI) have also ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Pendulum Clock
A pendulum clock is a clock that uses a pendulum, a swinging weight, as its timekeeping element. The advantage of a pendulum for timekeeping is that it is an approximate harmonic oscillator: It swings back and forth in a precise time interval dependent on its length, and resists swinging at other rates. From its invention in 1656 by Christiaan Huygens, inspired by Galileo Galilei, until the 1930s, the pendulum clock was the world's most precise timekeeper, accounting for its widespread use. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, pendulum clocks in homes, factories, offices, and railroad stations served as primary time standards for scheduling daily life, work shifts, and public transportation. Their greater accuracy allowed for the faster pace of life which was necessary for the Industrial Revolution. The home pendulum clock was replaced by less-expensive synchronous electric clocks in the 1930s and 1940s. Pendulum clocks are now kept mostly for their Interior decor, decorative ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Transit Instrument
In astronomy, a transit instrument is a small telescope with an extremely precisely graduated mount used for the precise observation of star positions. They were previously widely used in astronomical observatories and naval observatories to measure star positions in order to compile nautical almanacs for use by mariners for celestial navigation, and observe star transits to set extremely accurate clocks ( astronomical regulators) which were used to set marine chronometers carried on ships to determine longitude, and as primary time standards before atomic clocks. The instruments can be divided into three groups: meridian, zenith, and universal instruments. Types Meridian instruments For observation of star transits in the exact direction of South or North: * Meridian circles, Mural quadrants etc. * Passage instruments (transportable, also for prime vertical transits) Zenith instruments * Zenith telescope * Photozenith tube (PZT) * zenith cameras * Danjon astrolab ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Mural Instrument
A mural instrument is an angle measuring instrument mounted on or built into a wall. For astronomical purposes, these walls were oriented so they lie precisely on the meridian. A mural instrument that measured angles from 0 to 90 degrees was called a mural quadrant. They were utilized as astronomical devices in ancient Egypt and ancient Greece. Edmond Halley, due to the lack of an assistant and only one vertical wire in his transit, confined himself to the use of a mural quadrant built by George Graham after its erection in 1725 at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. Bradley's first observation with that quadrant was made on 15 June 1742. The mural quadrant has been called the "quintessential instrument" of 18th century (i.e. 1700s) observatories. It rose to prominence in the field of positional astronomy at this time. Construction Many older mural quadrants have been constructed by marking directly on the wall surfaces. More recent instruments were made with a frame that was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Southern Celestial Hemisphere
The southern celestial hemisphere, also called the Southern Sky, is the Southern Hemisphere, southern half of the celestial sphere; that is, it lies south of the celestial equator. This arbitrary sphere, on which seemingly fixed stars form constellations, diurnal motion, appears to rotate westward around a celestial pole, polar axis as the Earth Earth's rotation, rotates. At all times, the entire Southern Sky is visible from the geographic South Pole; less of the Southern Sky is visible the latitude, further north the observer is located. The northern counterpart is the northern celestial hemisphere. Astronomy In the context of astronomical discussions or writing about celestial cartography, celestial mapping, it may also simply then be referred to as the Southern Hemisphere. For the purpose of celestial mapping, the sky is considered by Astronomer, astronomers as the inside of a sphere divided in two halves by the celestial equator. The Southern Sky or Southern Hemisphere ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Edmond Halley
Edmond (or Edmund) Halley (; – ) was an English astronomer, mathematician and physicist. He was the second Astronomer Royal in Britain, succeeding John Flamsteed in 1720. From an observatory he constructed on Saint Helena in 1676–77, Halley catalogued the southern celestial hemisphere and recorded a transit of Mercury across the Sun. He realised that a similar transit of Venus could be used to determine the distances between Earth, Venus, and the Sun. Upon his return to England, he was made a fellow of the Royal Society, and with the help of King Charles II of England, Charles II, was granted a master's degree from University of Oxford, Oxford. Halley encouraged and helped fund the publication of Isaac Newton's influential ''Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica'' (1687). From observations Halley made in September 1682, he used Newton's law of universal gravitation to compute the periodicity of Halley's Comet in his 1705 ''Synopsis of the Astronomy of Comets''. It ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Planter Class
The planter class was a Racial hierarchy, racial and socioeconomic class which emerged in the Americas during European colonization of the Americas, European colonization in the early modern period. Members of the class, most of whom were settlers of European descent, consisted of individuals who owned or were financially connected to plantations, large-scale farms devoted to the production of cash crops in high demand across Euro-American markets. These plantations were operated by the forced labor of Slavery, enslaved people and indentured servants and typically existed in subtropical, tropical climates, tropical, and somewhat more temperate climates, where the soil was fertile enough to handle the intensity of plantation agriculture. Cash crops produced on plantations owned by the planter class included tobacco, sugarcane, cotton, Indigofera, indigo, coffee, tea, Cocoa bean, cocoa, sisal, Vegetable oil, oil seeds, Elaeis, oil palms, hemp, Hevea brasiliensis, rubber trees, and f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Observatory
An observatory is a location used for observing terrestrial, marine, or celestial events. Astronomy, climatology/meteorology, geophysics, oceanography and volcanology are examples of disciplines for which observatories have been constructed. The term ''observatoire'' has been used in French since at least 1976 to denote any institution that compiles and presents data on a particular subject (such as public health observatory) or for a particular geographic area (European Audiovisual Observatory). Astronomical observatories Astronomical observatories are mainly divided into four categories: space observatory, space-based, airborne observatory, airborne, ground-based, and underground-based. Historically, ground-based observatories were as simple as containing a mural instrument (for measuring the angle between stars) or Stonehenge (which has some alignments on astronomical phenomena). Ground-based observatories Ground-based observatories, located on the surface of Earth, are u ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Mathematics
Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many areas of mathematics, which include number theory (the study of numbers), algebra (the study of formulas and related structures), geometry (the study of shapes and spaces that contain them), Mathematical analysis, analysis (the study of continuous changes), and set theory (presently used as a foundation for all mathematics). Mathematics involves the description and manipulation of mathematical object, abstract objects that consist of either abstraction (mathematics), abstractions from nature orin modern mathematicspurely abstract entities that are stipulated to have certain properties, called axioms. Mathematics uses pure reason to proof (mathematics), prove properties of objects, a ''proof'' consisting of a succession of applications of in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |