libration but paying attention to the shadows. Thus passed by 1840, with Schmidt's habits making him neglect school. In the spring of 1841, Hellwag, a government councilor who was well experienced in astronomy, noticed his efforts. Hellwag asked Hofrath Voss, the son of the well known Eutin school rector, to entrust Schmidt with a 1200mm focal length Dollond telescope which Schmidt found to be very sharp, approximating the magnification to be 15-20x. He saw the bands of Jupiter, Saturn's rings and a crescent Venus for the first time with it. In July 1841, the Hamburg Gymnasium made a visit to the Altona Observatory, where Schmidt looked through a larger telescope for the first time and became acquainted with the well-known map of the Moon made by Wilhelm Beer and Johann Heinrich Mädler. Dr. Petersen showed him the craters Gassendi and Bullialdus. Rümker taught him the fundamentals of astronomical observation and let him use various telescopes from 1842 to 1845. In 1843, he made his first contribution to Astronomische Nachrichten, about the Sun and variable stars, with many more to follow. Benzenberg's assistant In 1845, he obtained a position as an assistant at Johann Friedrich Benzenberg's private observatory in Bilk near Düsseldorf, being tasked to with naked eye objects such as meteors, and searching for possible objects closer to the Sun than Mercury. However, the telescope made available to him was practically a low power terrestrial telescope, and the larger instrument was kept under a lock and key, as to prevent 20 year old Schmidt from damaging its "outer looks and splendor". Here, he confined himself to drawing parts of the lunar landscape instead of the entire face, using the method of drawing the same area under different lighting conditions or sun angles, the same one Schröter used. The drawing of entire phases was stopped from this point forward. Years 1846 – 1858 A year later, after Benzenberg died, he joined the Bonn Observatory under Friedrich Wilhelm Argelander. Here, Schmidt measured the visual magnitudes and positions of 325,037 stars for the BD star catalogue. He was not able to continue observing the Moon due to his job, but he still obtained numerous valuable drawings, and when he did not, what was seen was preserved in writing. He received an honorary doctorate from Bonn in 1868. From 1853 to 1858 he was director of Baron von Unkrechtsberg's private observatory at Olmütz (today