John Warren's unpublished observations of the Great Comet of 1811 from India

Abstract

Captain John Warren was the Acting Astronomer of Madras Observatory during the years 1805‒1811 when the Astronomer John Goldingham went to England on leave. At Madras, Warren observed the Great Comet of 1807 (C/1807 R1), computed its orbit, and prepared a manuscript that he sent to the Royal Astronomical Society in London (which they chose not to publish). Subsequently, Warren observed the Great Comet of 1811 (C/1811 F1), and recorded his observations in the Madras MS Records for 1812 (which are now housed in the Archives of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics). Outside Europe, Warren‘s Head Assistant Sanevasa Chairy was the first to independently notice the Great Comet-to-be, after rightfully sensing that the faint nebulosity near a star in Monoceros was a comet. Prompted, perhaps, by the fate of his 1807 paper, Warren chose not to write a paper about Madras Observatory observations of the 1811 comet, which I now discuss in this paper.