Johann Hieronymus Schröter

Johann Hieronymus Schröter (30 August 1745, Erfurt – 29 August 1816, Lilienthal) was a German astronomer.

Life

Schröter was born in Erfurt, and studied law at Göttingen University from 1762 until 1767, after which he started a ten-year-long legal practice.

In 1777 he was appointed Secretary of the Royal Chamber of George III in Hanover, where he made the acquaintance of two of William Herschel's brothers. In 1779 he acquired a three-foot-long (91 cm, almost one metre) achromatic refractor with 2.25-inch (57 mm) lens (50 mm) to observe the Sun, Moon and Venus. Herschel's discovery of Uranus in 1781 inspired Schröter to pursue astronomy more seriously, and he resigned his post and became chief magistrate and district governor of Lilienthal.

In 1784 he paid 31 Reichsthaler (about 600 Euros of today) for a Herschel reflector of 122 cm focal length and 12 cm aperture. He quickly gained a good name from his observational reports in journals, but was not satisfied and in 1786 paid 600 Reichstaler (an equivalent of six months earnings) for a 214 cm focal length 16.5 cm aperture reflector with eyepieces allowing up to 1,200 magnification, and 26 Thaler for a screw-micrometer. With this he systematically observed Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.