An English astronomer who was appointed the first Astronomer Royal by King Charles II in response to the need to find a way to accurately measure longitude at sea. Flamsteed got the job having recommended that the solution was to produce better tables of the movements of the Moon and the positions of the stars. His Historia coelestis Britannica, listing 2,935 stars, was the first major star catalogue compiled with telescopic aid. A preliminary version of it, published by Edmond Halley and Isaac Newton in 1712 without Flamsteed’s approval, introduced the method of designating stars now known as Flamsteed numbers.
