Series GPP/2 - Papers of Nathaniel Pigott

Nathaniel Pigott (1725-1804) and Edward Pigott (1753-1825) were astronomers notable for their work with John Goodricke and the observation of variable stars.

Nathanial Pigott
Nathaniel Pigott was a gentleman of leisure, a noted amateur astronomer and surveyor. The grandson of Viscount Fairfax of Gilling Castle in Yorkshire, Nathaniel Pigott led a peripatetic life, living for many years at Caen in Normandy and later at Louvain in Belgium (then the Austrian Netherlands). In 1749 he married Anna Mathurine de Beriot of Javingue.

In 1772-1773, at the request of the authorities in Brussels, he took a series of astronomical observations to establish the exact latitude and longitude of the principal towns of the province.

In the mid 1770s the family returned to Britain and by 1780 were living at York. In the garden of their house in Bootham (now no. 33, see York City Archives accession E98 f.58 v., Register of deeds) Nathaniel had an observatory built, where he took many transit observations. His primary interest seems to have been observations to establish the latitude of York. Following the death of his wife in 1792, he gave up the lease of the house in Bootham. He died in York on May 31st 1804.

Edward Pigott
Edward Pigott the eldest surviving son of Nathaniel Pigott (1725-1804), was involved in his father’s observations from an early age; he was one of the observers of the transit of Venus of 1769.

He sent his first paper to the Royal Society, ‘Account of a nebula in Coma Berenices’ in September 1779. His observation of a comet in November 1781 is mentioned at the beginning of John Goodricke’s ‘Journal of astronomical observations’. Goodricke [John Goodricke, 1764-1786], initially a pupil, soon became a respected colleague. From 1782 the two astronomers were engaged in diligent study of the variable stars and cross-checked their observations.

Pigott discovered the comet which bears his name in November 1783. In December 1784 he published ‘Observations of a new variable star’ [Eta Antinoi/ Eta Aquilae]. Accompanying his father to Louvain in 1786 he assisted in observations of the transit of Mercury. He sent to the Royal Society an account of an auroral display viewed at Kensington in February 1789. In 1796 he communicated a paper ‘On the periodical changes of brightness of two fixed stars’ [R Coronæ Borealis and R Scuti] ; a paper on the period of R Scuti followed in 1805.

He was at Fontainebleau in 1803 when war broke out between Britain and France and was not allowed to return to the United Kingdom until 1806. His observations of the comets of 1807 and 1811 were communicated to the French Academie des Sciences. His latter years were spent at Bath, and he died there on June 27th 1825.