went, as associate director of the observatory, to Albany, New York; but returned in 1861 to Michigan, and threw himself with vigour into the work of studying the astronomical and physical constants of the observatory and its instruments. Ireland and later years He resigned in 1863 as a direct result of the dismissal of Tappan by the University's regents and returned to Germany. Then, on the death of Sir William Rowan Hamilton in 1865, he accepted the post of Andrews Professor of Astronomy in the University of Dublin and Royal Astronomer of Ireland. His first undertaking at the Dublin Observatory was the erection of an equatorial telescope to carry the fine object-glass presented to the university by Sir James South; and on its completion he began an important series of researches on stellar parallax. The first, second and third parts of the Astronomical Observations and Researches made at Dunsink contain the results of these labors, and include discussions of the distances of the stars α Lyrae, ο Draconis, Groombridge 1830, 85 Pegasi, and Bradley 3077, and of the planetary nebula H. iv. 37. In 1873 the observatory, on Brünnow's recommendation, was provided with a first-class transit circle, which he proceeded to test as a preliminary to commencing an extended program of work with it. However, in 1874, as a result of failing health and eyesight, he resigned and retired to Basel. In 1880 he removed to Vevey, and in 1889 to Heidelberg, where he died on 20 August 1891. His headstone still stands in the Bergfriedhof, the old cemetery in Heidelberg. Legacy The permanence of his reputation was secured by the merits of his Lehrbuch der sphärischen Astronomie, which were at once and widely appreciated. In 1860 part I was translated into English by Robert Main, the Radcliffe observer at Oxford; Brünnow himself published an English version in 1865; it reached in the original a fifth edition in 1881, and was also translated into French, Russian, Italian and Spanish. References Further reading Patricia S. Whitesell: A Creation of His Own: Tappan's Detroit Observatory , Bentley Historical Library The University of Michigan (1998) Ann Arbor, External links Portrait of Franz Bruennow from the Lick Observatory Records Digital Archive, UC Santa Cruz Library's Digital Collections https://web.archive.org/web/20051216081237/http://www.detroitobservatory.umich.edu/JAHH2003/DetroitObservatoryArticle.pdf 1821 births 1891 deaths Directors of Dunsink Observatory 19th-century German astronomers Irish astronomers University of Michigan faculty Academics of Trinity College Dublin