St John’s College W.57-66

Thomas Catton, Astronomical Observations. English, nineteenth century.

[Thomas Catton (1760-1838)]: manuscript autograph records of Catton's astronomical observations, made in the Observatory of St John’s College, Cambridge, at irregular intervals between 1791 and 1832.  Catton obtained a B.A. from St John’s College in 1781; M.A. 1784; B.D. 1791. He became Fellow and Tutor of the College, and was responsible for the small observatory that was situated on Shrewsbury Tower, first constructed in 1765 and dismantled in 1859. He was also Fellow of the Royal Society and one of the earliest members of the Royal Astronomical Society.

 

 

Manuscript extra information

290x220 mm. 10 vols. Paper. Leather-backed wood boards, with some gold tooling on the boards and spine. The records were presented to the College by Sir Thomas Watson (1792-1882) in 1863. In the frontispiece of the first volume, Watson notes that “a selected number of these observations have been reduced and printed under the superintendence of the astronomer Royal, George Biddell Airey, Esq. at the expense of her Majesty’s Government, through the fund placed at the disposal of the Royal Society for aiding private scientific investigations”.