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Richard Anthony Proctor Quotes

Richard Anthony Proctor was an English astronomer. He is best remembered for having produced one of the earliest maps of Mars in 1867 from 27 drawings by the English observer William Rutter Dawes. His map was later superseded by those of Giovanni Schiaparelli and Eugène Antoniadi and his nomenclature was dropped .

He used old drawings of Mars dating back to 1666 to try to determine the sidereal day of Mars. His final estimate, in 1873, was 24h 37m 22.713s, very close to the modern value of 24h 37m 22.663s. Nevertheless, Frederik Kaiser's value of 24h 37m 22.622s is closer, by 0.012 seconds in 88,642.688 seconds, a very small difference in the error of both computations.

The crater Proctor on Mars is named after him. Wikipedia  

✵ 23. March 1837 – 12. September 1888
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Famous Richard Anthony Proctor Quotes

“The whole system has been long since swept away, and its records merely remain as illustrations of perverted ingenuity.”

Richard Anthony Proctor

Of the Ptolemaic system
Source: Saturn and its System (2nd ed 1882), Chapter 2, p. 32

“An air of mystery surrounds his researches, lying, as they do, chiefly in depths to which the far-seeing eye of the telescope alone penetrates.”

Richard Anthony Proctor

Source: Saturn and its System (2nd ed 1882), Chapter 1, p. 2

“As an astronomer in the true sense of the term, Sir John Herschel stood before all his contemporaries. Nay, he stood almost alone.”

Richard Anthony Proctor

"Sir John Herschel", p. 1
Astronomical Essays (1872)

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