  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.
