Edward Crossley (1841 [1] – 21 January 1905) was an English businessman, Liberal Party politician and astronomer.
He inherited his family's carpet manufacturing business (John Crossley & Sons) from his father when he was 27.
He built the Bermerside[2] astronomical observatory, operational from 1867 to 1894, and purchased a 36-inch (910 mm) telescope from Andrew Ainslie Common in 1885, and employed Joseph Gledhill as an observer.
With Gledhill and James Wilson (later Canon of Worcester), he wrote Handbook of Double Stars in 1879, which became a standard reference work.
By 1895 Crossley had deemed the rainy English weather and the industrial air pollution at his observatory site unsuitable for astronomy, so he donated his 36-inch (910 mm) telescope to the Lick Observatory in California.