William Edward Wilson

Who was William Edward Wilson?

William Edward Wilson was an Irish astronomer.

He was born at Greenisland, Co. Antrim, the only son of John and Frances Wilson of Daramona House, Streete, County Westmeath, Ireland and was privately educated.

He became interested in astronomy and travelled to Oran in 1870 to photograph the solar eclipse. In 1871 he acquired a reflecting telescope of 12 inches aperture and set it up in a dome in the gardens of Daramona House. He used it to experiment on the photography of the moon with wet plates and also began to study solar radiation using thermopiles. In 1881, he replaced the original telescope with a Grubb reflector of 24 inches aperture and a new dome and mounting that had an electrically controlled clock drive. The new telescope was mounted in a two-storey tower attached to the house with an attached physical laboratory, darkroom and machine shop.

Wilson’s main research efforts, in partnership with P.L. Gray, was to determine the temperature of the sun using a “differential radio-micrometer” of the sort developed by C.V. Boys in 1889, which combined a bolometer and galvanometer into one instrument.