Evening Post, Monday, January 1, 1968.

HE LIKES TO KEEP AN EYE ON MARS

For Mr. Ben Burrell, star-gazing should be looking up this month. For this is when the 64-year-old astronomer ends his career as an official photographer at Doncaster Plant Works, attached to the Director of  Design Office.
Mr. Burrell hopes he can now devote more time to astronomy, particularly its theory.
He is one of Britain’s leading amateur authorities on the subject of Mars.
“I cannot stand outside on cold winter nights like I used to do” said Mr. Burrell, of Woodhouse Road, Wheatly.
So why not install a telescope in a heated shelter?
“Because the warmth would interfere with the quality of the observations,” Mr Burrell explained.
“In heated rooms you get shimmering like you see above a hot stove, but it is exaggerated more by the magnification of the telescope.”
Once during severe winter of 1962-63 there were 17 Fahrenheit degrees of frost INSIDE Chesterfield Astronomical Society’s observatory.
Mr. Burrell came to Doncaster in 1911 and started at the Plant Works in 1918 as an apprentice fitter.

Studious
His interest in astronomy began in 1924, when he read a book by Sir Robert Ball, “The Story of the Heavens,”
He recalled: “I always was the studious type, with the basic temperament needed to study astronomy. And that book whetted mt appetite. I have been studying the Universe ever since.”
At the time Mr. Burrell was 21 and on a railway-sponsored engineering course at Doncaster Technical College.
Within five years he had bought a second-hand refracting telescope with three-inch lens, built a stand for it, and set it up in his back garden.
He still uses that telescope occasionally when he has visitors or is taking classes in astronomy.
Mr. Burrell built his second telescope in the early thirties, having a second-hand eight-and-a half inch diameter mirror, and this instrument lasted until the end of the 1939-45 war.
Today, he has his own seven-inch reflecting telescope, left to him by a friend after the last war, and a 10-inch reflecting telescope on loan to him from the British Astronomical Association, of which he has been a member since 1932 – though the mirrors of the later need re-aluminising.
Over the years, he has narrowed down his field to mainly the moon and planets – Mars and Jupiter in particular – “Bur I will look at anything that comes along.”
Mr. Burrell has been assistant director of the Mar section of the British Astronomical Association since 1945, so he receives by post all information on observations made on Mars by amateur astronomers all over the country.
He analyses and collates the data – a considerable task when the planet is in the nearest part of its orbit to Earth – and forwards it to the director of the section who makes the final report to the Association.
“I also send out maps and instructional material on Mars and deal with general correspondence on the planet,” he added.

Oxygen

“The most surprising feature of the recent discoveries is that craters exist on Mars like those on the surface of the Moon,” he said.
“They were shown clearly on the Mariner IV photographs, but no telescope on Earth had previously been able to pick them out.”
Is there life on Mars?
Mr. Burrell accepts the possibility of some life form, though certainly not the kind we know on Earth.
It could not exist in the planet’s atmosphere, which is made up of carbon dioxide and possibly nitrogen, with no appreciable quantity of oxygen.
The accepted theory about the dark patches seen on Mars through earth-bound telescopes is that they are caused by some kind of vegetation, and Mr. Burrell subscribes to this theory.

Leaps
August 1971will be a busy time for Mr. Burrell for then Mars will make its closest approach to Earth since 1956.
It will be 35,000,000 miles away and 15 years will elapse before it comes as close again.
Mr. Burrell does not think either America or Russia will be ready to put a man on Mars by 1971. Instead, they would probably send more sophisticated un-manned probes, which may make soft landings.
A Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, a member of Doncaster Naturalists (formerly Scientific) Society and twice president of Leeds Astronomical Society, Mr Burrell also conducts lecture courses for the Workers’ Educational Association besides lecturing all over Britain both on astronomy and his work as a railway photographer.
His proficiency as a photographer fits in happily with his astronomical pursuits, and in 1938 won him a place in history as the first man in Britain to photograph a total eclipse of the moon in colour.
He is married and has two grown-up daughters.
“For centuries the study of the heavens jogged steadily along, but now the Universe has been brought into our own backyard and it is going ahead in leaps and bounds,” declared Mr. Burrell.
“It is the most exciting time we have known”.
British and American astronomical societies had  just about doubled the number of their publications, and observational facts were pouring in so quickly that often there were no theoretical explanations for them.
His only wish was that he had been born a decade or two later, so that he could have experienced the present advances in space exploration as a younger man.
He has the ambition to do something original in astronomy before he dies.
“I am not likely to discover anything new observationally, but I would like to make some theoretical contribution,” he told me.
“I have some ideas on the structure of the Universe, but they are vague at the moment, and I must crystalise them. Maybe now I will have the time to do so.”

In The Dark

Ben Burrell certainly takes his star-gazing seriously. And so does Doncaster Corporation. The glow from street lights in built-up areas can be a big handicap to the astronomer, and when Corporation workmen began to set up new standards for mercury vapour lamps in Woodhouse Road, he realised that at least two would shine directly on to his telescopes.
He pointed this out to the borough Engineer, Mr. Peter Greaves, who straightaway sent men along to resite the standards. Now Mr. Burrell’s back garden has its own little pool of darkness.