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The Sir John Herschel Collection
The preparation of the print Calendar of the Correspondence of Sir John Herschel (Michael J. Crowe ed., David R. Dyck and James J. Kevin assoc. eds, Cambridge, England: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1998, viii + 828 pp) which was funded by the National Science Foundation, took ten years. It was accomplished by a team of seventeen professors, visiting scholars, graduate students, advanced undergraduates, and staff working at the University of Notre Dame.
The first online version of Calendar was created in 2009 by Dr Marvin Bolt and Steven Lucy, working at the Webster Institute of the Adler Planetarium, and it is that data that has now been reformatted for incorporation into Ɛpsilon.
Further information about Herschel, his correspondence, and the editorial method is available online here: http://historydb.adlerplanetarium.org/herschel/?p=intro
No texts of Herschel’s letters are currently available through Ɛpsilon.
Discusses meteor showers of 9 August 1840, emanating from a point in the constellation Perseus. Calls attention to a report on these meteors as seen from near Vesuvius in 1779 by William Hamilton.
Seeks to clear up confusions about various photographic processes, e.g., the Chrysotype process, developed by JH, about which confusions arose from earlier reports on them in the Athenaeum.
Reports his observations on the explosion at Dover of 19,000 pounds of gunpowder.
Describes a particularly brilliant aurora, which JH observed from Collingwood on the night of 6 May.
[Replying to remarks by T. R. Robinson reported in Athenaeum, #830 (Sept. 23, 1843), 866-7,] JH argues that William Herschel's 40-foot reflector was not a failure, noting, for example, the discovery by it of the sixth and seventh Saturnian satellites.
Requests publication of what will hopefully be JH's last letter on the Slough telescope [see JH's "[Reply to Dr. Robinson [on the Reflecting Telescopes of the Late Sir William Herschel]," Athenaeum, #836 (Nov. 4, 1843), 983-4.
Continues the debate with T. R. Robinson [see Athenaeum, #830 (Sept. 23, 1843), 866-7; #831 (Sept. 30, 1843), 884; and #834 (Oct. 21, 1843), 945-6] on the quality of William Herschel's 40-foot reflecting telescope.
[The discovery of Neptune having been just announced], JH calls attention to JH's recent suggestion to the B.A.A.S. that such a discovery was imminent; states that in 1842 JH had discussed the idea of a trans-Uranian planet with F. W. Bessel, and that [J. C.] Adams of Cambridge had carried out an investigation comparable to that of U. J. J. Leverrier.
Reports that JH will discuss the discovery of Neptune in his forthcoming Outlines Astr. Mentions Benjamin Peirce's calculations regarding Neptune.
Reports witnessing a lunar rainbow, including a secondary rainbow.
Provides a rule for dividing vanishing lines in perspective drawing. [Written by 'Geometer', i.e., JH.]