John Russell Hind 1823 - 1895
by John Toone BAA VSS
The mid 19th Century was an eventful
time for astronomy with the discovery by calculation and international collaboration of the planet Neptune and an abundance
of asteroid and variable star discoveries. In the forefront of all this activity was a young English professional astronomer
who was responsible for the discovery of the first cataclysmic variable star U Gem.
John Russell Hind was born in Nottingham on
12th May 1823 and was the son of a lace manufacturer. He attended Nottingham Grammar School and by the age of sixteen
he was contributing astronomical notes to the Nottingham Journal and other newspapers. He went to London at aged seventeen
to work as a civil engineer but the lure of astronomy proved too much and in 1840 he secured a post at the Royal Observatory,
Greenwich. The Astronomer Royal, George Biddell Airy appointed him to the Magnetical & Meteorological Department where
one of his tasks was to determine the longitude of Valentia. He left Greenwich in 1844 to succeed William Rutter Dawes as
Director of George Bishop’s private observatory in Regent’s Park, London. It is from this observatory, which was
equipped with a fine 7 inch Dolland refractor, that he did most of his observational work and built up his fine reputation.
On the 30th September 1846 Hind became
the first British observer to successfully identify Neptune after Franz Friedrich Ernst Brunnow had wrote to him informing
him of Johann Galle and Heinrich d’Arrest’s discovery on the 23rd September. The fact that he was contacted
directly, ahead of all other national astronomers including the Astronomer Royal Mr Airy, attests to his growing international
reputation at the age of 23. This event must have heaped further humiliation on Airy (to whom Hind reported to just two years
earlier) and James Challis who had been searching for Neptune (at Airy’s request) unsuccessfully for two months with
a 12 inch refractor at Cambridge.
From 1847 onwards Hind discovered a wealth of
new astronomical objects by scrutinising the equatorial and ecliptic regions of the sky with the 7 inch refractor and comparing
what he saw with the recently published Berlin star maps. By 1850 he was the World’s leading discoverer of variable
stars with a total of 12 out of a named list of 41. By 1854 he had discovered 10 of the first 30 numbered asteroids. He also
found 2 comets and 4 deep sky objects. A full list of his discoveries appears at the end of this article.
Gemini was the most productive constellation
for him in terms of discoveries as he found the first four known variable stars within its boundaries (R, S, T & U Gem).
U Gem discovered on 15th December 1855 proved to be the most important of these variables as it seemed to be at
the time a unique class of repeating nova. It was not until after Hind’s death 41 years later in 1896, that any other
similar behaving star was found (SS Cyg by Miss L D Wells). U Gem is today known as the prototype of the dwarf nova class
of variable star. Hind’s account of U Gem’s discovery is reproduced below from the Monthly Notices of the RAS
16, 56 (1856):
On the evening of December 15th,
1855, I remarked in R.A. (1856) 7h 46m 33s.65, N.P.D. 670 37’ 17".1, an object shining as a star of the ninth magnitude, with a very blue planetary
light, which I have never seen before during the five years that my attention has been directed to this quarter of the heavens.
On the next fine night, Dec. 18, it was certainly fainter than on the 15th by half a magnitude or more. Since that
date I have not had an opportunity of examining it till last evening, January 10th, when its brightness was not
greater than that of stars of the twelfth magnitude. It is evidently a variable star of a very interesting description, inasmuch
as the minimum brightness appears to extend over a great part of the whole period, contrary to what happens with Algol and
S Cancri.
The position given above was deduced by micrometrical
comparisons with the principal component of the double star ∑1158. The variable precedes 1m 26s.53,
and is N. 7’ 30".8.
"Mr. Bishop’s Observatory, 1856, January
11."
|
7" refractor at George
Bishop’s observatory |
Four objects in the sky bear his name. R Lep
was christened "Hind’s Crimson Star" after he wrote in October 1845: "of the most intense crimson, resembling a blood-drop
on the background of the sky". NGC1555 became known as "Hind’s Variable Nebula" following its discovery together with
T Tau in October 1852. Hind wrote: "Last night (October 11) I noticed a very small nebulous looking object south preceding
a star of 10 mag, which to my surprise, had escaped attention on the map for 4h RA recently published – possibly it
may be variable". Asteroid number 1897 is officially named "Hind" as is also a lunar crater.
In addition to variable stars and asteroids
Hind had interests in several other areas of astronomy. In 1851 he accompanied William Rutter Dawes to Sweden to observe a
solar eclipse. He observed many comets and computed their orbits. The Earth is believed to have passed through the tail of
Comet Tebbutt on 30th June 1861 and Hind wrote in the Times; "There was a peculiar phosphorescence or illumination
of the sky, which I attributed at the time to an auroral glare; it was remarked by other persons as something unusual". This
was an evening observation before sunset. Hind later wrote in the Times; "Allow me to draw attention to a circumstance relating
to the present comet. It appears not only possible, but even probable, that in the course of Sunday last, the Earth passed
through the tail at a distance of perhaps two-thirds of its length from the nucleus".
In 1848 he was a recipient of a Testimonial
of the RAS and John Herschel delivered the following address on Hind who was absent:
"No name comes oftener before the astronomical
world, as an assiduous observer and able computist in the department of astronomy which the nature of the instrumental means
committed to his charge gives him an immediate connection with, as a diligent observer of double-stars and computer of their
orbits, for instance, or as the first detector of several comets, one of them a very remarkable one, which, from his calculation
of its orbit, he was enabled to follow up to its actual perihelion, and to behold it at noon-day presenting a clear and well
defined disc within 2o of the Sun"
In 1853 Hind received the RAS Gold Medal. He
was elected to several foreign astronomical institutions and received multiple awards from them also.
In 1853 Hind was appointed Superintendent of
the Nautical Almanac office a position he held until his retirement in 1891 (record 38 year tenure). He continued to direct
and observe from the Regent’s Park Observatory until its closure in 1861 and then moved to live in Twickenham where
George Bishop Junior set up and operated an observatory between 1863 and 1877 that contained the same 7 inch refractor transferred
from Regent’s Park.
Hind was a strong man but was of an extremely
nervous disposition and frequently had to give up work on account of "excessive nervous exhaustion". He wrote in his diary
entry for 15th January 1849, "I mentioned to Mr Airy today that I thought very soon I should have to relinquish
observations at night entirely". Happily a few months rest enabled him to resume his normal observing tasks. He was also a
very shy character and when he retired from the Nautical Almanac office he lived quietly in Twickenham until his death caused
by heart disease accelerated by a chill on 23rd December 1895.
From a variable star perspective, Hind’s
immediate legacy was to galvanise variable star research in Great Britain. Long term and perhaps more importantly, his early
discovery of U Gem means that today astronomers have historical data on a cataclysmic variable star over a period of 150 years
and it will always be 40 years longer than for any other similar class of star.
J R Hind’s Discoveries
Variable Stars (22):
S Cnc, T Cnc, S CMi, R Cap, T Cap, Mu Cep, R
Gem, S Gem, T Gem, U Gem, S Hya, T Hya, R Lep, V841 Oph, R Ori, R Peg, T Peg, R Psc, S Psc, R Tau, T Tau, S Vir.
Asteroids (10):
7 Iris, 8 Flora, 12 Victoria, 14 Irene, 18 Melpomene,
19 Fortuna, 22 Kalliope, 23 Thalia, 27 Euterpe, 30 Urania.
Deep Sky Objects (4):
NGC1555, NGC4125, NGC6535, NGC6760.
Comets (2):
1846 O1 (deVico – Hind)
1847 C1 (Hind)
