Astronomical Work
Molyneux is best known for his work with Bradley in attempting to measure the parallax of Gamma Draconis leading to the discovery of the aberration of light. Molyneux was interested in detecting parallax that others such Robert Hooke had attempted but failed to detect. Unlike Hooke, Molyneux had large amounts of patience and had resources to expend. Like Hooke, Molyneux decided to take advantage of Gamma Draconis always being over London. Molyneux commissioned a larger set of telescopes and employed James Bradley as an expert who had more astronomical and mathematical knowledge. Working together, Bradley and Molyneux performed over 80 observations to a precision of greater than 1 arcsecond from December of 1725 until late in 1727. Measurements of this precision had never before been performed with telescopes. Bradley and Molyneux were surprised to find that rather than detect a parallax they detected an unexplained wobble of the star. Moreover, similar wobbles were found by Bradley using another high-precision telescope for some 200 other stars. Molyneux died shortly before Bradley realized that the observed changes they were seeing was in fact due to the aberration of light.
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“The better a work is, the more it attracts criticism; it is like the fleas who rush to jump on white linens.”
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