Isaac Roberts

Isaac Roberts FRS (27 January 1829 – 17 July 1904[1]) was a Welsh engineer and businessman best known for his work as an amateur astronomer, pioneering the field of astrophotography of nebulae.

When the other partner, John Johnson, died, Roberts was in charge of the contracts and affairs of the firm.

[9] Roberts died suddenly in Crowborough, Sussex, England in 1904, aged 75,[1] widowing his then-wife Dorethea Klumpke.

He was cremated soon after his death, and his ashes lay in Crowborough for about five years before he was reburied in Flaybrick Hill Cemetery, in Birkenhead.

Roberts was patriotic to his home land of Wales, and continued to use the Welsh language throughout his life.

His epitaph reads: Through a donation of his wife Dorothea in honor of her late husband, the Société astronomique de France (the French Astronomical Society) established the Prix Dorothea Klumpke-Isaac Roberts for the encouragement of the study of the wide and diffuse nebulae of William Herschel, the obscure objects of Barnard, or the cosmic clouds of R.P.

He mounted photographic plates directly at the prime focus to avoid the loss of light that would occur from using a second mirror.

Astrophotography requires very long exposure times (sometimes an hour or more) to record faint objects on a photographic plate.

Photographs such as this changed astronomy by revealing the true form of nebulae and clusters, and eventually helped to develop the theories about galaxies.