A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century Part 34

This summation of knowledge in that branch, though in truth leaving many questions open, had an air of finality which tended to discourage further inquiry.[927] It gave form to a reaction against the sanguine views entertained by Hevelius, Schroter, Herschel and Gruithuisen as to the possibilities of agreeable residence on the moon, and relegated the "Selenites," one of whose cities Schroter thought he had discovered, and of whose festal processions Gruithuisen had not despaired of becoming a spectator, to the shadowy land of the Ivory Gate. All examples of change in lunar formations were, moreover, dismissed as illusory. The light contained in the work was, in short, a "dry light," not stimulating to the imagination. "A mixture of a lie," Bacon shrewdly remarks, "doth ever add pleasure." For many years, accordingly, Schmidt had the field of selenography almost to himself.

Reviving interest in the subject was at once excited and displayed by the appointment, in 1864, of a Lunar Committee of the British a.s.sociation. The indirect were of greater value than the direct fruits of its labours. An English school of selenography rose into importance.

Popularity was gained for the subject by the diffusion of works conspicuous for ingenuity and research. Nasmyth's and Carpenter's beautifully ill.u.s.trated volume (1874) was succeeded, after two years, by a still more weighty contribution to lunar science in Mr. Neison's well-known book, accompanied by a map, based on the survey of Beer and Madler, but adding some 500 measures of positions, besides the representation of several thousand new objects. With Schmidt's _Charte der Gebirge der Mondes_, Germany once more took the lead. This splendid delineation, built upon Lohrmann's foundation, embraced the detail contained in upwards of 3,000 original drawings, representing the labour of thirty-four years. No less than 32,856 craters are represented in it, on a scale of seventy-five inches to a diameter. An additional help to lunar inquiries was provided at the same time in this country by the establishment, through the initiative of the late Mr. W. R. Birt, of the Selenographical Society.

But the strongest incentive to diligence in studying the rugged features of our celestial helpmate has been the idea of probable or actual variation in them. A change always seems to the inquisitive intellect of man like a breach in the defences of Nature's secrets, through which it may hope to make its way to the citadel. What is desirable easily becomes credible; and thus statements and rumours of lunar convulsions have successively, during the last hundred years, obtained credence, and successively, on closer investigation, been rejected. The subject is one as to which illusion is peculiarly easy. Our view of the moon's surface is a bird's-eye view. Its conformation reveals itself indirectly through irregularities in the distribution of light and darkness. The forms of its elevations and depressions can be inferred only from the shapes of the black, unmitigated shadows cast by them. But these shapes are in a state of perpetual and bewildering fluctuation, partly through changes in the angle of illumination, partly through changes in our point of view, caused by what are called the moon's "librations."[928] The result is, that no single observation can be _exactly_ repeated by the same observer, since identical conditions recur only after the lapse of a great number of years.

Local peculiarities of surface, besides, are liable to produce perplexing effects. The reflection of earth-light at a particular angle from certain bright summits completely, though temporarily, deceived Herschel into the belief that he had witnessed, in 1783 and 1787, volcanic outbursts on the dark side of the moon. The persistent recurrence, indeed, of similar appearances under circ.u.mstances less amenable to explanation inclined Webb to the view that effusions of native light actually occur.[929] More cogent proofs must, however, be adduced before a fact so intrinsically improbable can be admitted as true.

But from the publication of Beer and Madler's work until 1866, the received opinion was that no genuine sign of activity had ever been seen, or was likely to be seen, on our satellite; that her face was a stereotyped page, a fixed and irrevisable record of the past. A profound sensation, accordingly, was produced by Schmidt's announcement, in October, 1866, that the crater "Linne," in the Mare Serenitatis, had disappeared,[930] effaced, as it was supposed, by an igneous outflow.

The case seemed undeniable, and is still dubious. Linne had been known to Lohrmann and Madler, 1822-32, as a deep crater, five or six miles in diameter, the third largest in the dusky plain known as the "Mare Serenitatis"; and Schmidt had observed and drawn it, 1840-43, under a practically identical aspect. Now it appears under high light as a whitish spot, in the centre of which, as the rays begin to fall obliquely, a pit, scarcely two miles across, emerges into view.[931] The crateral character of this comparatively minute depression was detected by Father Secchi, February 11, 1867.

This is not all. Schroter's description of Linne, as seen by him November 5, 1788, tallies quite closely with modern observation;[932]

while its inconspicuousness in 1797 is shown by its omission from Russell's lunar globe and maps.[933] We are thus driven to adopt one of two suppositions: either Lohrmann, Madler, and Schmidt were entirely mistaken in the size and importance of Linne, or a real change in its outward semblance supervened during the first half of the century, and has since pa.s.sed away, perhaps again to recur. The latter hypothesis seems the more probable: and its probability is strengthened by much evidence of actual obscuration or variation of tint in other parts of the lunar surface, more especially on the floor of the great "walled plain" named "Plato."[934] From a re-examination with a 13-inch refractor at Arequipa in 1891-92, of this region, and of the Mare Serenitatis, Mr. W. H. Pickering inclines to the belief that lunar volcanic action, once apparently so potent, is not yet wholly extinct.[935]

An instance of an opposite kind of change was alleged by Dr. Hermann J.

Klein of Cologne in March, 1878.[936] In Linne the obliteration of an old crater had been a.s.sumed; in "Hyginus N.," the formation of a new crater was a.s.serted. Yet, quite possibly, the same cause may have produced the effects thought to be apparent in both. It is, however, far from certain that any real change has affected the neighbourhood of Hyginus. The novelty of Klein's observation of May 19, 1877, may have consisted simply in the detection of a hitherto unrecognised feature.

The region is one of complex formation, consequently of more than ordinary liability to deceptive variations in aspect under rapid and entangled fluctuations of light and shade.[937] Moreover, it seems to be certain, from Messrs. Pratt and Cap.r.o.n's attentive study, that "Hyginus N." is no true crater, but a shallow, saucer-like depression, difficult of clear discernment.[938] Under suitable illumination, nevertheless, it contains, and is marked by, an ample shadow.[939]

In both these controverted instances of change, lunar photography was invoked as a witness; but, notwithstanding the great advances made in the art by De la Rue in this country, by Draper, and, above all, by Rutherford in America, without decisive results. Investigations of the kind began to a.s.sume a new aspect in 1890, when Professor Holden organised them at the Lick Observatory.[940] Autographic moon-pictures were no longer taken casually, but on system; and Dr. Weinek's elaborate study, and skilful reproductions of them at Prague,[941] gave them universal value. They were designed to provide materials for an atlas on the scale of Beer and Madler's, of which some beautiful specimen-plates have been issued. At Paris, in 1894, with the aid of a large "equatoreal coude," a work of similar character was set on foot by MM. Loewy and Puiseux. Its progress has been marked by the successive publication of five instalments of a splendid atlas, on a scale of about eight feet to the lunar diameter, accompanied by theoretical dissertations, designed to establish a science of "selenology." The moon's formations are thus not only delineated under every variety of light-incidence, but their meaning is sought to be elicited, and their history and mutual relations interpreted.[942] Henceforth, at any rate, the lunar volcanoes can scarcely, without notice taken, breathe hard in their age-long sleep.

Melloni was the first to get undeniable heating effects from moonlight.

His experiments, made on Mount Vesuvius early in 1846,[943] were repeated with like result by Zantedeschi at Venice four years later. A rough measure of the intensity of those effects was arrived at by Piazzi Smyth at Guajara, on the Peak of Teneriffe, in 1856. At a distance of fifteen feet from the thermomultiplier, a Price's candle was found to radiate just twice as much heat as the full moon.[944] Then, after thirteen years, in 1869-72, an exact and extensive series of observations on the subject were made by the present Earl of Rosse. The lunar radiations, from the first to the last quarter, displayed, when concentrated with the Parsonstown three-foot mirror, appreciable thermal energy, increasing with the phase, and largely due to "dark heat,"

distinguished from the quicker-vibrating sort by inability to traverse a plate of gla.s.s. This was supposed to indicate an actual heating of the surface, during the long lunar day of 300 hours, to about 500 F.[945]

(corrected later to 197),[946] the moon thus acting as a direct radiator no less than as a reflector of heat. But the conclusion was very imperfectly borne out by Dr. Boedd.i.c.ker's observations with the same instrument and apparatus during the total lunar eclipse of October 4, 1884.[947] This initial opportunity of measuring the heat phases of an eclipsed moon was used with the remarkable result of showing that the heat disappeared almost completely, though not quite simultaneously, with the light. Confirmatory evidence of the extraordinary prompt.i.tude with which our satellite parts with heat already to some extent appropriated, was afforded by Professor Langley's bolometric observations at Allegheny of the partial eclipse of September 23, 1885.[948] Yet it is certain that the moon sends us a perceptible quant.i.ty of heat _on its own account_, besides simply throwing back solar radiations. For in February, 1885, Professor Langley succeeded, after many fruitless attempts, in getting measures of a "lunar heat-spectrum." The incredible delicacy of the operation may be judged of from the statement that the sum-total of the thermal energy dispersed by his rock-salt prisms was insufficient to raise a thermometer fully exposed to it one-thousandth of a degree Centigrade! The singular fact was, however, elicited that this almost evanescent spectrum is made up of two superposed spectra, one due to reflection, the other, with a maximum far down in the infra-red, to radiation.[949] The corresponding temperature of the moon's sunlit surface Professor Langley considers to be about that of freezing water.[950] Repeated experiments having failed to get any thermal effects from the dark part of the moon, it was inferred that our satellite "has no internal heat sensible at the surface"; so that the radiations from the lunar soil giving the low maximum in the heat-spectrum, "must be due purely to solar heat which has been absorbed and almost immediately re-radiated." Professor Langley's explorations of the terra incognita of immensely long wave-lengths where lie the unseen heat-emissions from the earth into s.p.a.ce, led him to the discovery that these, contrary to the received opinion, are in good part transmissible by our atmosphere, although they are completely intercepted by gla.s.s. Another important result of the Allegheny work was the abolition of the anomalous notion of the "temperature of s.p.a.ce," fixed by Pouillet at -140 C. For s.p.a.ce in itself can have no temperature, and stellar radiation is a negligible quant.i.ty. Thus, it is safe to a.s.sume "that a perfect thermometer suspended in s.p.a.ce at the distance of the earth or moon from the sun, but shielded from its rays, would sensibly indicate the absolute zero,"[951] ordinarily placed at -273 C.

A "Prize Essay on the Distribution of the Moon's Heat" (The Hague), 1891, by Mr. Frank W. Very, who had taken an active part in Professor Langley's long-sustained inquiry, embodies the fruits of its continuation. They show the lunar disc to be tolerably uniform in thermal power. The brighter parts are also indeed hotter, but not much.

The traces perceived of a slight retention of heat by the substances forming the lunar surface, agreed well with the Parsonstown observations of the total eclipse of the moon, January 28, 1888.[952] For they brought out an unmistakable divergence between the heat and light phases. A curious decrease of heat previous to the first touch of the earth's shadow upon the lunar globe remains unexplained, unless it be admissible to suppose the terrestrial atmosphere capable of absorbing heat at an elevation of 190 miles. The probable range of temperature on the moon was discussed by Professor Very in 1898.[953] He concluded it to be very wide. Hotter than boiling water under the sun's vertical rays, the arid surface of our dependent globe must, he found, cool in the 14-day lunar night to about the temperature of liquid air.

Although that fundamental part of astronomy known as "celestial mechanics" lies outside the scope of this work, and we therefore pa.s.s over in silence the immense labours of Plana, Damoiseau, Hansen, Delaunay, G. W. Hill, and Airy in reconciling the observed and calculated motions of the moon, there is one slight but significant discrepancy which is of such importance to the physical history of the solar system, that some brief mention must be made of it.

Halley discovered in 1693, by examining the records of ancient eclipses, that the moon was going faster then than 2,000 years previously--so much faster, as to have got ahead of the place in the sky she would otherwise have occupied, by about two of her own diameters. It was one of Laplace's highest triumphs to have found an explanation of this puzzling fact. He showed, in 1787, that it was due to a very slow change in the ovalness of the earth's...o...b..t, tending, during the present age of the world, to render it more nearly circular. The pull of the sun upon the moon is thereby lessened; the counter-pull of the earth gets the upper hand; and our satellite, drawn nearer to us by something less than an inch each year,[954] proportionately quickens her pace. Many thousands of years hence the process will be reversed; the terrestrial orbit will close in at the sides, the lunar orbit will open out under the growing stress of solar gravity, and our celestial chronometer will lose instead of gaining time.

This is all quite true as Laplace put it; but it is not enough. Adams, the virtual discoverer of Neptune, found with surprise in 1853 that the received account of the matter was "essentially incomplete," and explained, when the requisite correction was introduced, only half the observed acceleration.[955] What was to be done with the remaining half?

Here Delaunay, the eminent French mathematical astronomer, unhappily drowned at Cherbourg in 1872 by the capsizing of a pleasure-boat, came to the rescue.[956]

It is obvious to anyone who considers the subject a little attentively, that the tides must act to some extent as a friction-brake upon the rotating earth. In other words, they must bring about an almost infinitely slow lengthening of the day. For the two ma.s.ses of water piled up by lunar influence on the hither and farther sides of our globe, strive, as it were, to detach themselves from the unity of the terrestrial spheroid, and to follow the movements of the moon. The moon, accordingly, holds them _against_ the whirling earth, which revolves like a shaft in a fixed collar, slowly losing motion and gaining heat, eventually dissipated through s.p.a.ce.[957] This must go on (so far as we can see) until the periods of the earth's rotation and of the moon's revolution coincide. Nay, the process will be continued--should our oceans survive so long--by the feebler tide-raising power of the sun, ceasing only when day and night cease to alternate, when one side of our planet is plunged in perpetual darkness and the other seared by unchanging light.

Here, then, we have the secret of the moon's turning always the same face towards the earth. It is that in primeval times, when the moon was liquid or plastic, an earth-raised tidal wave rapidly and forcibly reduced her rotation to its present exact agreement with her period of revolution. This was divined by Kant[958] nearly a century before the necessity for such a mode of action presented itself to any other thinker. In a weekly paper published at Konigsberg in 1754, the modern doctrine of "tidal friction" was clearly outlined by him, both as regards its effects actually in progress on the rotation of the earth, and as regards its effects already consummated on the rotation of the moon--the whole forming a preliminary attempt at what he called a "natural history" of the heavens. His sagacious suggestion, however, remained entirely unnoticed until revived--it would seem independently--by Julius Robert Mayer in 1848;[959] while similar, and probably original, conclusions were reached by William Ferrel of Allensville, Kentucky, in 1858.[960]

Delaunay was not then the inventor or discoverer of tidal friction; he merely displayed it as an effective cause of change. He showed reason for believing that its action in checking the earth's rotation, far from being, as Ferrel had supposed, completely neutralised by the contraction of the globe through cooling, was a fact to be reckoned with in computing the movements, as well as in speculating on the history, of the heavenly bodies. The outstanding acceleration of the moon was thus at once explained. It was explained as apparent only--the reflection of a real lengthening, by one second in 100,000 years, of the day. But on this point the last word has not yet been spoken.

Professor Newcomb undertook in 1870 the onerous task of investigating the errors of Hansen's Lunar Tables as compared with observations prior to 1750. The results, published in 1878,[961] proved somewhat perplexing. They tend, in general, to reduce the amount of acceleration left unaccounted for by Laplace's gravitational theory, and proportionately to diminish the importance of the part played by tidal friction. But, in order to bring about this diminution, and at the same time conciliate Alexandrian and Arabian observations, it is necessary to reject _as total_ the ancient solar eclipses known as those of Thales and Larissa. This may be a necessary, but it must be admitted to be a hazardous expedient. Its upshot was to indicate a possibility that the observed and calculated values of the moon's acceleration might after all prove to be identical; and the small outstanding discrepancy was still further diminished by Tisserand's investigation, differently conducted, of the same Arabian eclipses discussed by Newcomb.[962] The necessity of having recourse to a lengthening day is then less pressing than it seemed some time ago; and the effect, if perceptible in the moon's motion, should, M. Tisserand remarked, be proportionately so in the motions of all the other heavenly bodies. The presence of the apparent general acceleration that should ensue can be tested with most promise of success, according to the same authority, by delicate comparisons of past and future transits of Mercury.

Newcomb further showed that small residual irregularities are still found in the movements of our satellite, inexplicable either by any known gravitational influence, or by any _uniform_ value that could be a.s.signed to secular acceleration.[963] If set down to the account of imperfections in the "time-keeping" of the earth, it could only be on the arbitrary supposition of fluctuations in its rate of going themselves needing explanation. This, it is true, might be found in very slight changes of figure,[964] not altogether unlikely to occur. But into this cloudy and speculative region astronomers for the present decline to penetrate. They prefer, if possible, to deal only with calculable causes, and thus to preserve for their "most perfect of sciences" its special prerogative of a.s.sured prediction.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 796: _Neueste Beytrage zur Erweiterung der Sternkunde_, Bd.

iii., p. 14 (1800).]

[Footnote 797: _Ibid._, p. 24.]

[Footnote 798: _Phil. Trans._, vol. xciii., p. 215.]

[Footnote 799: _Mem. Roy. Astr. Soc._, vol. vi., p. 116.]

[Footnote 800: _Month. Not._, vol. xix., pp. 11, 25.]

[Footnote 801: _Ibid._, vol. x.x.xviii., p. 398.]

[Footnote 802: _Am. Jour. of Sc._, vol. xvi., p. 124.]

[Footnote 803: _Wash. Obs._ for 1876, Part ii., p. 34.]

[Footnote 804: _Pop. Astr._, vol. ii., p. 168; _Astr. Jour._, No. 335.]

[Footnote 805: _Astr. and Astrophysics_, vol. xiii., p. 866.]

[Footnote 806: _Ibid._, p. 867.]

[Footnote 807: _Month. Not._, vol. xxiv., p. 18.]

[Footnote 808: _Ibid._, vol. xxiii., p. 234 (Challis).]

[Footnote 809: _Untersuchungen uber die Spectra der Planeten_, p. 9.]

[Footnote 810: _Sirius_, vol. vii., p. 131.]

[Footnote 811: _Potsdam Publ._, No. 30; _Astr. Nach._, No. 3,171; Frost, _Astr. and Astrophysics_, vol. xii., p. 619.]

[Footnote 812: Zollner and Winnecke made it=O13, _Astr. Nach._, No.

2,245.]

[Footnote 813: _Neueste Beytrage_, Bd. iii., p. 50.]

[Footnote 814: _Astr. Jahrbuch_, 1804, pp. 97-102.]

[Footnote 815: Webb, _Celestial Objects_, p. 46 (4th ed.).]

[Footnote 816: _L'Astronomie_, t. ii., p. 141.]

[Footnote 817: _Observations sur les Planetes Venus et Mercure_, p. 87.]

[Footnote 818: _Observatory_, vol. vi., p. 40.]

[Footnote 819: _Atti dell' Accad. dei Lincei_, t. v. ii., p. 283, 1889; _Astr. Nach._, No. 2,944.]

[Footnote 820: _Astr. Nach._ No. 2,479.]