Biography
Dawes was born in West Sussex, the son of William Dawes, also an astronomer, and Judith Rutter.
Dawes was a clergyman who made extensive measurements of double stars as well as observations of planets. He was a friend of William Lassell. He was nicknamed "eagle eye". He set up his private observatory at his home in Haddenham, Buckinghamshire. One of his telescopes, an eight-inch refractor by Cooke, survives at the Cambridge Observatory where it is known as the Thorrowgood Telescope.
He made extensive drawings of Mars during its 1864 opposition. In 1867, Richard Anthony Proctor made a map of Mars based on these drawings.
He won the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1855.
Craters on Mars and on the Moon are named after him, as is a gap within Saturn's C Ring.
An optical phenomenon, the Dawes limit, is named for him.
Read more about this topic: William Rutter Dawes
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