Richard Towneley - Astronomy at Towneley Hall

Astronomy At Towneley Hall

Richard's uncle Christopher Towneley (1604–74) had befriended a number of the northern astronomers, including Jeremiah Horrocks, William Crabtree, William Gascoigne and John Stephenson, and collected their papers. As an astronomer Towneley carried on the tradition of observation, that had been established in the north of England by Horrocks, Crabtree and Gascoigne based on the work of Johannes Kepler.

Towneley's main astronomical work was measuring eclipses of the moons of Jupiter and Flamsteed made copies of Towneley's results taken between 9 September 1665 and 21 September 1672. Flamsteed's first task as Astronomer Royal was to continue Towneley's work on the moons of Jupiter. The same work was also underway at the Observatoire de Paris and, in 1683, Flamsteed recorded a catalogue of eclipses of Jupiter's satellites for the following year based on communication from, amongst others, Mr Towneley. This was at the time, the best method of determining longitude and, although unsuited for use at sea, was successful in determining the true longitude of remote coasts for the correction of charts.

A regular topic of the Flamsteed letters was the weather and how clouds had prevented measurement. In this respect, Towneley had two particular pieces of luck with weather in Lancashire. The first concerned a solar eclipse on 1 June 1676. The new Observatory at Greenwich was nearing completion and it was decided that this eclipse was a fitting occasion for the inaugural observations. The King had said he would like to be present. The day turned out to be cloudy at Greenwich and there was no Royal presence. Flamsteed was still able to report the event using the data recorded in Lancashire by Towneley. The second event concerned a transit of Mercury on 28 October 1677. In Lancashire, Towneley was able to observe the sun through "flying clouds" during the last part of the event and was able to time Mercury's exit. Neither Greenwich nor Paris were so lucky as clouds covered most of Europe. There was only one other European report of Mercury's exit, from Avignon, but Edmund Halley much further south on St Helena was able to record the entire event.