Career
Tebbutt's father had retired from store keeping about the year 1843, purchased a tract of land at the eastern end of the town of Windsor known as the peninsula, and built a residence there. This subsequently became the site of the observatory built by his son, who at 19 years of age had begun his observations of the heavens with an ordinary marine telescope and a sextant.
About nine years later, on 13 May 1861, Tebbutt discovered the 1861 comet, one of the most brilliant comets known. There was no means then of telegraphing the intelligence to England where it became visible on 29 June. Tebbutt was acknowledged as the first discoverer of this comet, and the first computer of its approximate orbit. In November 1861 he purchased an excellent refracting telescope of 3.25-inch (8.3 cm) aperture and 48-inch (1.2 m) focal length, and in 1862 on the resignation of the Rev. W. Scott he was offered the position of government astronomer for New South Wales but refused it.
Read more about this topic: John Tebbutt
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“The 19-year-old Diana ... decided to make her career that of wife. Today that can be a very, very iffy line of work.... And what sometimes happens to the women who pursue it is the best argument imaginable for teaching girls that they should always be able to take care of themselves.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
““Never hug and kiss your children! Mother love may make your children’s infancy unhappy and prevent them from pursuing a career or getting married!” That’s total hogwash, of course. But it shows on extreme example of what state-of-the-art “scientific” parenting was supposed to be in early twentieth-century America. After all, that was the heyday of efficiency experts, time-and-motion studies, and the like.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)
“He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)