James Keeler was born in La Salle, Illinois. After living there on the Illinois River, his family moved to Mayport, Florida. It was here, in 1869, where Keeler saw his first solar eclipse. Seeing this phenomena influenced young Keeler. Keeler's interest in astronomy continued to grow and he ordered a two-inch achromatic lens and two smaller lenses to use as eyepieces. With these materials Keeler assembled a telescope which he used to observe ships, lighthouses, and many celestial objects such as the Moon, Jupiter, Saturn, and some nebulae.
Keeler's sister, who attended a private school in New York, was a local observatory and she mentioned that she had previously seen Saturn through her brother's telescope. Philanthropist Charles Rockwell was intrigued by this and brought James up north and helped him apply to several colleges. Rockwell then helped him gain admittance from Johns Hopkins University in 1877.
While at College, Keeler viewed a total eclipse of the sun from Central City, Colorado at a height of 8,400 miles above sea level. Keeler drew a picture of the Solar corona and it was published along with his first scientific paper as a piece of the United States Naval Observatory report of the eclipse. Upon graduating from Johns Hopkins, Keeler went on to work at the Allegheny Observatory in Pittsburgh with Professor Samuel Pierpont Langley. There they studied the hitherto unknown region of the solar spectrum.
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