The astronomer John Lee (1783 66) inherited Hartwell House in Buckinghamshire in 1827. During its colourful history, the mansion had notably been occupied between 1809 and 1814 by the exiled court of Louis XVIII. Lee turned the house into something of a museum for his antiquarian and scientific interests, constructing an observatory to the design of the his close friend William Henry Smyth (1788 1865), after whom Lee named a lunar sea. A naval officer, Smyth had helped to found the Royal Geographical Society in 1830. His Sidereal Chromatics (1864) and The Sailor's Word-Book (1867) are also reissued in this series. This charming history and description of Hartwell, its grounds, buildings and contents, appeared in two volumes between 1851 and 1864, illuminating especially the practice of contemporary astronomy. Illustrated throughout, the first volume (1851) includes coverage relating to the locality, the lords of the manor, the collected antiquities and the observatory."

The astronomer John Lee (1783 66) inherited Hartwell House in Buckinghamshire in 1827. During its colourful history, the mansion had notably been occupied between 1809 and 1814 by the exiled court of Louis XVIII. Lee turned the house into something of a museum for his antiquarian and scientific interests, constructing an observatory to the design of the his close friend William Henry Smyth (1788 1865), after whom Lee named a lunar sea. A naval officer, Smyth had helped to found the Royal Geographical Society in 1830. His Sidereal Chromatics (1864) and The Sailor's Word-Book (1867) are also reissued in this series. This charming history and description of Hartwell, its grounds, buildings and contents, appeared in two volumes between 1851 and 1864, illuminating especially the practice of contemporary astronomy. Illustrated throughout, the second volume (1864) serves as a supplement, recording Smyth's researches in the years since the first volume went to press."

Admiral William Henry Smyth (1780 1865) went to sea at an early age, becoming a sailor and surveyor with the East India Company, and later moving to Mediterranean waters. A founding member of the Royal Geographical Society in 1830, he spent much of his free time engaged in scientific pursuits. One of his final projects was this 'word-book' of nautical terminology, which he had been compiling throughout his career, and whose publication was eagerly anticipated by his fellow naval officers. Although Smyth died before it was published in 1867, his notes were edited by his family and revised by Sir Edward Belcher (1799 1877). Ranging from technical terminology to sailors' slang, Smyth's glossary contains more than 700 pages of definitions, arranged alphabetically, making it an indispensable source on nineteenth-century nautical vocabulary for both maritime historians and sailing aficionados.

Admiral William Henry Smyth's Sidereal Chromatics (1864) represents a landmark achievement in nineteenth-century astronomy, offering the most precise observations of the colours of double stars yet recorded. An expansion upon his well-known Bedford Cycle of Celestial Objects, which garnered a gold medal from the Royal Astronomical Society, Sidereal Chromatics provides both a theory concerning the source of double-star colours and a method for determining their most exact description. Detailed charts compare Smyth's measurements of more than one hundred double stars with his own previously published observations and those of his fellow astronomer, Father Benedetto Sestini. This edition also includes Smyth's famous colour chart, an attempt to standardise the process of identifying double-star colours. Sidereal Chromatics ends with Smyth's plea to amateur astronomers to continue the effort of charting the heavens, aided by improved telescopes and works such as his, 'trustworthy treatises available to all men'.

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