David Elijah Packer: cluster variables, meteors and the solar corona

Abstract

David Elijah Packer (1862-1936), a librarian by profession, was an enthusiastic amateur astronomer who observed from London and Birmingham. He first came to the attention of the astronomical community in 1890 when he discovered a variable star in the globular cluster M5, only the second periodic variable to be discovered in a globular cluster. He also observed meteors and nebulae, on one occasion reporting a brightening in the nucleus of the galaxy M77. However, his remarkable claims in 1896 that he had photographed the solar corona in daylight were soon shown to be flawed.