He was interested in a variety of sciences including natural philosophy and history, meteorology, entomology, physics and astronomy, and published numerous papers in the Philosophical Transactions. For example, he collected birds and insects, measured the velocity of sound to remarkable acuracy, and was among the first to see the "ashen light" of Venus on May 2, 1715.

William Derham passed away on April 5, 1735 in Upminster, Essex (England) at age 77.

At age 75, William Derham published a list of 16 nebulous objects (Derham 1733), of which he had extracted 14 from Hevelius' Prodomus Astronomiae without further verification but in case of the "Nebulous Star in Andromeda's Girdle", actually the Andromeda Galaxy M31, and two objects he found from Halley's catalog of southern stars. He also states to have observed the five northern nebulae from Halley's list and resolved into stars the one "in Antinous" (M11). Derham's catalog became quite welknown and was also translated to French by Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis.

Links

• Derham's Catalog of 16 "Nebulous Stars"
• Some William Derham info (Yann Pothier)
• William Derham Biography (Galileo Project)

• William Derham, 1733. Observations of the Appearance among the Fix'd Stars, called Nebulous Stars. Philosophical Transactions, Vol. 38, No. 428, pp. 70-74 [ADS: 1733RSPT...38...70D] Available online.
• Kenneth Glyn Jones, 1968. The Search for the Nebulae -- IV. Journal of the British Astronomical Association, Vol. 79, No. 1 (1968), pp. 19-25 [ADS: 1968JBAA...79...19J] Section on Derham: pp. 19-21. Reprinted in: The Search for the Nebulae. Chalfont St. Giles, 1975 [ADS: 1975sene.book.....J]
• Kenneth Glyn Jones, 1991. Messier's Nebulae and Star Clusters. 2nd ed, Cambridge University Press [ADS: 1991mnsc.book.....J]. Here p. 320.