A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century Part 55

Among the ascertained a.n.a.logies between the stellar and nebular systems is that of variability of light. On October 11, 1852, Mr. Hind discovered a small nebula in Taurus. Chacornac observed it at Ma.r.s.eilles in 1854, but was confounded four years later to find it vanished.

D'Arrest missed it October 3, and redetected it December 29, 1861. It was easily seen in 1865-66, but invisible in the most powerful instruments from 1877 to 1880.[1518] Barnard, however, made out an almost evanescent trace of it, October 15, 1890, with the great Lick telescope,[1519] and saw it easily in the spring of 1895, while six months later it evaded his most diligent search.[1520] Then again, on September 28, 1897, the Yerkes 40-inch disclosed it to him as a mere shimmer at the last limit of visibility; and it came out in three diffuse patches on plates to which, on December 6 and 27, 1899, Keeler gave prolonged exposures with the Crossley reflector.[1521] Moreover, a fairly bright adjacent nebula, perceived by O. Struve in 1868, and observed shortly afterwards by d'Arrest, has totally vanished, and was most likely only a temporary apparition. These are the most authentic instances of nebular variability. Many others have been more or less plausibly alleged;[1522] but Professor Holden's persuasion, acquired from an exhaustive study of the records since 1758,[1523] that the various parts of the Orion nebula fluctuate continually in relative l.u.s.tre, has not been ratified by photographic evidence.

The case of the "trifid" nebula in Sagittarius, investigated by Holden in 1877,[1524] is less easily disposed of. What is certain is that a remarkable triple star, centrally situated, according to the observations of both the Herschels, 1784-1833, in a dark s.p.a.ce between the three great _lobes_ of the nebula, is now, and has been since 1839, densely involved in one of them; and since the hypothesis of relative motion is on many grounds inadmissible, the change that has apparently taken place must be in the distribution of light. One no less conspicuous was adduced by Mr. H. C. Russell, director of the Sydney Observatory.[1525] A particularly bright part of the great Argo nebula, as drawn by Sir John Herschel, has, it would seem, almost totally disappeared. He noticed its absence in 1871, using a 7-inch telescope, failed equally later on to find it with an 11-1/2-inch, and his long-exposure photographs show no vestige of it. The same structure is missing from, or scarcely traceable in, a splendid picture of the nebula taken by Sir David Gill in twelve hours distributed over four nights in March, 1892.[1526] An immense gaseous expanse has, it would seem, sunk out of sight. Materially it is no doubt there; but the radiance has left it.

Nebulae have no ascertained proper motions. No genuine change of place in the heavens has yet been recorded for any one of them. All equally hold aloof, so far as telescopic observation shows, from the busy journeyings of the stars. This seeming immobility is partly an effect of vast distance. Nebular parallax has, up to the present, proved evanescent, and nebular parallactic drift, in response to the sun's advance through s.p.a.ce, remains likewise imperceptible.[1527] It may hence be presumed that no nebulae occur within the sphere occupied by the nearer stars. But the difficulty of accurately measuring such objects must also be taken into account. Displacements which would be conspicuous in stars might easily escape detection in ill-defined, hazy ma.s.ses. Thus the measures executed by d'Arrest in 1857[1528] have not yet proved effective for their designed purpose of contributing to the future detection of proper motions. Some determinations made by Mr. Burnham with the Lick refractor in 1891,[1529] will ultimately afford a more critical test. He found that nearly all planetary nebulae include a sharp stellar nucleus, the position of which with reference to neighbouring stars could be fixed no less precisely than if it were devoid of nebulous surroundings. Hence, the objects located by him cannot henceforward shift, were it only to the extent of a small fraction of a second, without the fact coming to the knowledge of astronomers.

The spectroscope, however, here as elsewhere, can supplement the telescope; and what it has to tell, it tells at once, without the necessity of waiting on time to ripen results. Sir William Huggins made, in 1874,[1530] the earliest experiments on the radial movements of nebulae. But with only a negative upshot. None of the six objects examined gave signs of spectral alteration, and it was estimated that they must have done so had they been in course of recession from or approach towards the earth by as much as twenty-five miles a second.

With far more powerful appliances, Professor Keeler renewed the attempt at Lick in 1890-91. His success was unequivocal. Ten planetary nebulae yielded perfectly satisfactory evidence of line-of-sight motion,[1531]

the swiftest traveller being the well-known greenish globe in Draco,[1532] found to be hurrying towards the earth at the rate of forty miles a second. For the Orion nebula, a recession of about eleven miles was determined,[1533] the whole of which may, however, very well belong to the solar system itself, which, by its translation towards the constellation Lyra, is certainly leaving the great nebula pretty rapidly behind. The anomaly of seeming nebular fixity has nevertheless been removed; and the problem of nebular motion has begun to be solved through the demonstrated possibility of its spectroscopic investigation.

Keeler's were the first trustworthy determinations of radial motion obtained visually. That the similar work on the stars begun at Greenwich in 1874, and carried on for thirteen years, remained comparatively unfruitful, was only what might have been expected, the instruments available there being altogether inadequate for the attainment of a high degree of accuracy.

The various obstacles in the way of securing it were overcome by the subst.i.tution of the sensitive plate for the eye. Air-tremors are thus rendered comparatively innocuous; and measurements of stellar lines displaced by motion with reference to fiducial lines from terrestrial sources, photographed on the same plates, can be depended upon within vastly reduced limits of error. Studies for the realisation of the "spectrographic" method were begun by Dr. Vogel and his able a.s.sistant, Dr. Scheiner, at Potsdam in 1887. Their preliminary results, communicated to the Berlin Academy of Sciences, March 15, 1888, already showed that the requirements for effective research in this important branch were at last about to be complied with. An improved instrument was erected in the autumn of the same year, and the fifty-one stars, bright enough for determination with a refractor of 11 inches aperture, were promptly taken in hand. A list of their motions in the line of sight, published in 1892,[1534] was of high value, both in itself and for what it promised. One noteworthy inference from the data it collected was that the eye tends, under unfavourable circ.u.mstances, to exaggerate the line-displacements it attempts to estimate. The velocities photographically arrived at were of much smaller amounts than those visually a.s.signed. The average speed of the Potsdam stars came out only 104 miles a second, the quickest among them being Aldebaran, with a recession of thirty miles a second. More lately, however, Deslandres and Campbell have determined for Zeta Herculis and Eta Cephei respectively approaching rates of forty-four and fifty-four miles a second.

The installation, in 1900, of a photographic refractor 31-1/2 inches in aperture, coupled with a 20-inch guiding telescope, will enable Dr.

Vogel to investigate spectrographically some hundreds of stars fainter than the second magnitude; and the materials thus acc.u.mulated should largely help to provide means for a definite and complete solution of the more than secular problem of the sun's advance through s.p.a.ce. The solution should be complete, because including a genuine determination of the sun's velocity, apart from a.s.sumptions of any kind. M. Homann's attempt, in 1885,[1535] to extract some provisional information on the subject from the radial movements of visually determined stars gave a fair earnest of what might be done with materials of a better quality.

He arrived at a goal for the sun's way shifted eastward to the constellation Cygnus--a result congruous with the marked tendency of recently determined apexes to collect in or near Lyra; and the most probable corresponding velocity seemed to be about nineteen miles a second, or just that of the earth in its...o...b..t. A more elaborate investigation of the same kind, based by Professor Campbell in 1900[1536] upon the motions of 280 stars, determined with extreme precision, suffered in completeness through lack of available data from the southern hemisphere. The outcome, accordingly, was an apex most likely correctly placed as regards right ascension, but displaced southward by some fifteen degrees. The speed of twelve miles a second, a.s.signed to the solar translation, approximates doubtless very closely to the truth.

A successful beginning was made in nebular spectrography by Sir William Huggins, March 7, 1882.[1537] Five lines in all stamped themselves upon the plate during forty-five minutes of exposure to the rays of the strange object in Orion. Of these, four were the known visible lines, and a fifth, high up in the ultra-violet, at wave-length 3,727, has evidently peculiar relationships, as yet imperfectly apprehended. It is strong in the spectra of many planetaries; it helped to characterise the nebular metamorphosis of Nova Aurigae, yet failed to appear in Nova Persei. Two additional hydrogen lines, making six in all, were photographed at Tulse Hill, from the Orion nebula, in 1890;[1538] and Dr. Copeland's detection in 1886[1539] of the yellow ray D_3 gave the first hint of the presence of helium in this prodigious formation. Nor are there wanting spectroscopic indications of its physical connection with the stars visually involved in it. Sir William and Lady Huggins found a plate exposed February 5, 1888, impressed with four groups of fine bright lines, originating in the continuous light of two of the trapezium-stars, but extending some way into the surrounding nebula.[1540] And Dr. Scheiner[1541] argued a wider relationship from the common possession, by the nebula and the chief stars in the constellation Orion, of a blue line, bright in the one case, dark in the others, since identified as a member of one of the helium series.

The structural unity of the stellar and nebular orders in this extensive region of the sky has also, by direct photographic means, been unmistakably affirmed.

The first promising autographic picture of the Orion nebula was obtained by Draper, September 30, 1880.[1542] The marked approach towards a still more perfectly satisfactory result shown by his plates of March, 1881 and 1882, was unhappily cut short by his death. Meanwhile, M. Janssen was at work in the same field from 1881, with his accustomed success.[1543] But Dr. A. Ainslie Common left all compet.i.tors far behind with a splendid picture, taken January 30, 1883, by means of an exposure of thirty-seven minutes in the focus of his 3-foot silver-on-gla.s.s mirror.[1544] Photography may thereby be said to have definitely a.s.sumed the office of historiographer to the nebulae, since this one impression embodies a ma.s.s of facts hardly to be compa.s.sed by months of labour with the pencil, and affords a record of shape and relative brightness in the various parts of the stupendous object it delineates which must prove invaluable to the students of its future condition. Its beauty and merit were officially recognised by the award of the Astronomical Society's Gold Medal in 1884.

A second picture of equal merit, obtained by the same means, February 28, 1883, with an exposure of one hour, is reproduced in the frontispiece. The vignette includes two specimens of planetary photography. The Jupiter, with the great red spot conspicuous in the southern hemisphere, is by Dr. Common. It dates from September 3, 1879, and was accordingly one of the earliest results with his 36-inch, the direct image in which imprinted itself in a fraction of a second, and was subsequently enlarged on paper about twelve times. The exquisite little picture of Saturn was taken at Paris by MM. Paul and Prosper Henry, December 21, 1885, with their 13-inch photographic refractor. The telescopic image was in this case magnified eleven times previous to being photographed, an exposure of about five seconds being allowed; and the total enlargement, as it now appears, is nineteen times. A trace of the dusky ring perceptible on the original negative is lost in the print.

A photograph of the Orion nebula taken by Dr. Roberts in 67 minutes, November 30, 1886, made a striking disclosure of the extent of that prodigious object. More than six times the nebulous area depicted on Dr.

Common's plates is covered by it, and it plainly shows an adjacent nebula, separately catalogued by Messier, to belong to the same vast formation.

This disposition to annex and appropriate has come out more strongly with every increase of photographic power. Plates exposed at Harvard College in March, 1888, with an 8-inch portrait-lens (the same used in the preparation of the Draper Catalogue) showed the old-established "Fish-mouth" nebula not only to involve the stars of the sword-handle, but to be in tolerably evident connection with the most easterly of the three belt-stars, from which a remarkable nebulous appendage was found to proceed.[1545] A still more curious discovery was made by W. H.

Pickering in 1889.[1546] Photographs taken in three hours from the summit of Wilson's Peak in California revealed the existence of an enormous, though faint spiral structure, enclosing in its span of nearly seventeen degrees the entire stellar and nebulous group of the Belt and Sword, from which it most likely, although not quite traceably, issues as if from a nucleus. A startling glimpse is thus afforded of the cosmical importance of that strange "hiatus" in the heavens which excited the wonder of Huygens in 1656. The inconceivable attenuation of the gaseous stuff composing it was virtually demonstrated by Mr.

Ranyard.[1547]

In March, 1885, Sir Howard Grubb mounted for Dr. Isaac Roberts, at Maghull, near Liverpool (his observatory has since been transferred to Crowborough in Suss.e.x), a silver-on-gla.s.s reflector of twenty inches aperture, constructed expressly for use in celestial photography. A series of nebula-pictures, obtained with this fine instrument, have proved highly instructive both as to the structure and extent of these wonderful objects; above all, one of the great Andromeda nebula, to which an exposure of three hours was given on October 1, 1888.[1548] In it a convoluted structure replaced and rendered intelligible the anomalously rifted ma.s.s seen by Bond in 1847.[1549] The effects of annular condensation appeared to have stamped themselves upon the plate, and two attendant nebulae presented the aspect of satellites already separated from the parent body, and presumably revolving round it. The ring-nebula in Lyra was photographed at Paris in 1886, and shortly afterwards by Von Gothard with a 10-inch reflector,[1550] and he similarly depicted in 1888 the two chief spiral and other nebulae.[1551]

Photographs of the Lyra nebula taken at Algiers in 1890,[1552] and at the Vatican observatory in 1892,[1553] were remarkable for the strong development of a central star, difficult of telescopic discernment, but evidently of primary importance to the annular structure around.

The uses of photography in celestial investigations become every year more manifold and more apparent. The earliest chemical star-pictures were those of Castor and Vega, obtained with the Cambridge refractor in 1850 by Whipple of Boston under the direction of W. C. Bond. Double-star photography was inaugurated under the auspices of G. P. Bond, April 27, 1857, with an impression, obtained in eight seconds, of Mizar, the middle star in the handle of the Plough. A series of measures from sixty-two similar images gave the distance and position-angle of its companion with about the same accuracy attainable by ordinary micrometrical operations; and the method and upshot of these novel experiments were described in three papers remarkably forecasting the purposes to be served by stellar photography.[1554] The matter next fell into the able hands of Rutherfurd, who completed in 1864 a fine object gla.s.s (of 11-1/2 inches) corrected for the ultra-violet rays, consequently useless for visual purposes. The sacrifice was recompensed by conspicuous success. A set of measurements from his photographs of nearly fifty stars in the Pleiades, and their comparison with Bessel's places, enabled Dr. Gould to announce, in 1866, that during the intervening third of a century no changes of importance had occurred in their relative positions.[1555] And Mr. Harold Jacoby[1556] similarly ascertained the fixity of seventy-five of Rutherfurd's Atlantids, between the epoch 1873 and that of Dr. Elkin's heliometric triangulation of the cl.u.s.ter in 1886,[1557] extending the interval to twenty-seven years by subsequent comparisons with plates taken at Lick, September 27, 1900.[1558] Positive, however, as well as negative results have ensued from the application of modern methods to that antique group.

On October 19, 1859, Wilhelm Tempel, a Saxon peasant by origin, later a skilled engraver, discovered with a small telescope, bought out of his scanty savings, an elliptical nebulosity, stretching far to the southward from the star Merope. It attracted the attention of many observers, but was so often missed, owing to its extreme susceptibility to adverse atmospheric influences, as to rouse unfounded suspicions of its variability. The detection of this evasive object gave a hint, barely intelligible at the time, of further revelations of the same kind by more cogent means.

A splendid photograph of 1,421 stars in the Pleiades, taken by the MM.

Henry with three hours' exposure, November 16, 1885, showed one of the brightest of them to have a small spiral nebula, somewhat resembling a strongly-curved comet's tail, attached to it. The reappearance of this strange appurtenance on three subsequent plates left no doubt of its real existence, visually attested at Pulkowa, February 5, 1886, by one of the first observations made with the 30-inch equatoreal.[1559] Much smaller apertures, however, sufficed to disclose the "Maia nebula,"

_once it was known to be there_. Not only did it appear greatly extended in the Vienna 27-inch,[1560] but MM. Perrotin and Thollon saw it with the Nice 15-inch, and M. Kammermann of Geneva, employing special precautions, with a refractor of only ten inches aperture.[1561] The advantage derived by him for bringing it into view, from the insertion into the eye-piece of a uranium film, gives, with its photographic intensity, valid proof that a large proportion of the light of this remarkable object is of the ultra-violet kind.

The beginning thus made was quickly followed up. A picture of the Pleiades procured at Maghull in eighty-nine minutes, October 23, 1886, revealed nebulous surroundings to no less than four leading stars of the group, namely, Alcyone, Electra, Merope, and Maia; and a second impression, taken in three hours on the following night, showed further "that the nebulosity extends in streamers and fleecy ma.s.ses till it seems almost to fill the s.p.a.ces between the stars, and to extend far beyond them."[1562] The coherence of the entire mixed structure was, moreover, placed beyond doubt by the visibly close relationship of the stars to the nebulous formations surrounding them in Dr. Roberts's striking pictures. Thus Goldschmidt's notion that all the cl.u.s.tered Pleiades const.i.tute, as it were, a second Orion trapezium in the midst of a huge formation of which Tempel's nebula is but a fragment,[1563]

has been to some extent verified. Yet it seemed fantastic enough in 1863.

Then in 1888 the MM. Henry gave exposures of four hours each to several plates, which exhibited on development some new features of the entangled nebulae. The most curious of these was the linking together of stars by nebulous chains. In one case seven aligned stars appeared strung on a silvery filament, "like beads on a rosary."[1564] The "rows of stars," so often noticed in the sky, may, then, be concluded to have more than an imaginary existence. Of the 2,326 stars recorded in these pictures, a couple of hundred among the brightest can, at the outside, be reckoned as genuine Pleiades. The great majority were relegated, by Pickering's[1565] and Stratonoff's[1566] counts of the stellar populace _in_ and _near_ the cl.u.s.ter, to the position of outsiders from it. They are undistinguished denizens of the abysmal background upon which it is projected.

Investigations of its condition were carried a stage further by Barnard.

On November 14, 1890,[1567] he discovered visually with the Lick refractor a close nebulous satellite to Merope, photographs of which were obtained by Keeler in 1898.[1568] It appears in them of a rudely pentagonal shape, a prominent angle being directed towards the adjacent star. Finally, an exposure of ten hours made by Barnard with the Willard lens indicated the singular fact that the entire group is embedded in a nebulous matrix, streaky outliers of which blur a wide surface of the celestial vault.[1569] The artist's conviction of the reality of what his picture showed was confirmed by negatives obtained by Bailey at Arequipa in 1897, and by H. C. Wilson at Northfield (Minnesota) in 1898.[1570]

With the Ealing 3-foot reflector, sold by Dr. Common to Mr. Crossley, and by him presented to the Lick Observatory, Professor Keeler took in 1899 a series of beautiful and instructive nebula[1571] photographs; One of the Trifid may be singled out as of particular excellence. An astonishing mult.i.tude of new nebulae were revealed by trial-exposures with this instrument. A "conservative estimate" gave 120,000 as the number coming within its scope. Moreover, the majority of those actually recorded were of an unmistakable spiral character, and they included most of Sir John Herschel's "double nebulae," previously supposed to exemplify the primitive history of binary stellar systems.[1572] Dr. Max Wolf's explorations with a 6-inch Voigtlander lens in 1901 emphatically reaffirmed the inexhaustible wealth of the nebular heavens. In one restricted region, midway between Praesepe and the Milky Way, he located 135 nebulae, where only three had until then been catalogued; and he counted 108 such objects cl.u.s.tering round the star 31 Comae Berenices,[1573] and so closely that all might be occulted together by the moon. The general photographic Catalogue of Nebulae which Dr. Wolf has begun to prepare[1574] will thus be a most voluminous work.

The history of celestial photography at the Cape of Good Hope began with the appearance of the great comet of 1882. No special apparatus was at hand; so Sir David Gill called in the services of a local artist, Mr.

Allis of Mowbray, with whose camera, strapped to the Observatory equatoreal, pictures of conspicuous merit were obtained. But their particular distinction lay in the mult.i.tude of stars begemming the background. (See Plate III.) The sight of them at once opened to the Royal Astronomer a new prospect. He had already formed the project of extending Argelander's "Durchmusterung" from the point where it was left by Schonfeld to the southern pole; and his ideas regarding the means of carrying it into execution crystallised at the needle touch of the cometary experiments. He resolved to employ photography for the purpose.

The exposure of plates was accordingly begun, under the care of Mr. Ray Woods, in 1885; and in less than six years, the sky, from 19 of south lat.i.tude to the pole, had been covered in duplicate. Their measurement, and the preparation of a catalogue of the stars imprinted upon them, were generously undertaken by Professor Kapteyn, and his laborious task has at length been successfully completed. The publication, in 1900, of the third and concluding volume of the "Cape Photographic Durchmusterung"[1575] placed at the disposal of astronomers a photographic census of the heavens fuller and surer than the corresponding visual enumeration executed at Bonn. It includes 454,875 stars, nearly to the tenth magnitude, and their positions are reliable to about one second of arc.

The production of this important work was thus a result of the Cape comet-pictures; yet not the most momentous one. They turned the scale in favour of recourse to the camera when the MM. Henry encountered, in their continuation of Chacornac's half-finished enterprise of ecliptical charting, sections of the Milky Way defying the enumerating efforts of eye and hand. The perfect success of some preliminary experiments made with an instrument constructed by them expressly for the purpose was announced to the Academy of Sciences at Paris, May 2, 1885. By its means stars estimated as of the sixteenth magnitude clearly recorded their presence and their places; and the enormous increase of knowledge involved may be judged of from the fact that, in a s.p.a.ce of the Milky Way in Cygnus 2 15' by 3, where 170 stars had been mapped by the old laborious method, about five thousand stamped their images on a single Henry plate.

These results suggested the grand undertaking of a general photographic survey of the heavens, and Gill's proposal, June 4, 1886, of an International Congress for the purpose of setting it on foot was received with acclamation, and promptly acted upon. Fifty-six delegates of seventeen different nationalities met in Paris, April 16, 1887, under the presidentship of Admiral Mouchez, to discuss measures and organise action. They resolved upon the construction of a Photographic Chart of the whole heavens, comprising stars of a fourteenth magnitude, to the surmised number of twenty millions; to be supplemented by a Catalogue, framed from plates of comparatively short exposure, giving start to the eleventh magnitude. These will probably amount to about one million and a quarter. For procuring both sets of plates, instruments were constructed precisely similar to that of the MM. Henry, which is a photographic refractor, thirteen inches in aperture, and eleven feet focus, attached to a guiding telescope of eleven inches aperture, corrected, of course, for the visual rays. Each place covers an area of four square degrees, and since the series must be duplicated to prevent mistakes, about 22,000 plates will be needed for the Chart alone. The task of preparing them was apportioned among eighteen observatories scattered over the globe, from Mexico to Melbourne; but three in South America having become disabled or inert, were replaced in 1900 by those at Cordoba, Montevideo, and Perth, Western Australia. Meanwhile, the publication of results has begun, and is likely to continue for at least a quarter of a century. The first volume of measures from the Potsdam Catalogue-plates was issued in 1899, and its successors, if on the same scale, must number nearly 400. Moreover, ninety-six heliogravure enlargements from the Paris Chart-plates, distributed in the same year, supplied a basis for the calculation that the entire Atlas of the sky, composed of similar sheets, will form a pile thirty feet high and two tons in weight![1576] It will, however, possess an incalculable scientific value. For millions of stars can be determined by its means, from their imprinted images, with an accuracy comparable to that attainable by direct meridian observations.

One of the most ardent promoters of the scheme it may be expected to realise was Admiral Mouchez, the successor of Leverrier in the direction of the Paris Observatory. But it was not granted to him to see the fruition of his efforts. He died suddenly June 25, 1892.[1577] Although not an astronomer by profession, he had been singularly successful in pushing forward the cause of the science he loved, while his genial and open nature won for him wide personal regard. He was replaced by M.

Tisserand, whose mathematical eminence fitted him to continue the traditions of Delaunay and Leverrier. But his career, too, was unhappily cut short by an unforeseen death on October 20, 1896; and the more eminent among the many qualifications of his successor, M. Maurice Loewy, are of the practical kind.

The sublime problem of the construction of the heavens has not been neglected amid the multiplicity of tasks imposed upon the cultivators of astronomy by its rapid development. But data of a far higher order of precision, and indefinitely greater in amount, than those at the disposal of Herschel or Struve must be acc.u.mulated before any definite conclusions on the subject are possible. The first organised effort towards realising this desideratum was made by the German Astronomical Society in 1865, two years after its foundation at Heidelberg. The original programme consisted in the _exact_ determination of the places of all Argelander's stars to the ninth magnitude (exclusive of the polar zone), from the reobservation of which, say, in the year 1950, astronomers of two generations hence may gather a vast store of knowledge--directly of the apparent motions, indirectly of the mutual relations binding together the suns and systems of s.p.a.ce. Thirteen observatories in Europe and America joined in the work, now virtually terminated. Its scope was, after its inception, widened to include southern zones as far as the Tropic of Capricorn; this having been rendered feasible by Schonfeld's extension (1875-1885) of Argelander's survey. Thirty thousand additional stars thus taken in were allotted in zones to five observatories. Another important undertaking of the same cla.s.s is the reobservation of the 47,300 stars in Lalande's _Histoire Celeste_. Begun under Arago in 1855, its upshot has been the publication of the great Paris Catalogue, issued in eight volumes, between 1887 and 1902. From a careful study of their secular changes in position, M.

Bossert has already derived the proper motions of a couple of thousand out of nearly fifty thousand stars enumerated in it.

Through Dr. Gould's unceasing labours during his fifteen years'

residence at Cordoba, a detailed acquaintance with southern stars was brought about. His _Uranometria Argentina_ (1879) enumerates the magnitudes of 8,198 out of 10,649 stars visible to the naked eye under those transparent skies; 33,160 down to 9-1/2 magnitude are embraced in his "zones"; and the Argentine General Catalogue of 32,468 southern stars was published in 1886. Valuable work of the same kind has been done at the Leander McCormick Observatory, Virginia, by Professor O.

Stone; while the late Redcliffe observer's "Cape Catalogue for 1880"

affords inestimable aid to the practical astronomer south of the line, which has been reinforced with several publications issued by the present Astronomer Royal at the Cape. Moreover, the gigantic task entered upon in 1860 by Dr. C. H. F. Peters, director of the Litchfield Observatory, Clinton (N.Y.), and of which a large instalment was finished in 1882, deserves honourable mention. It was nothing less than to map all stars down to, and even below, the fourteenth magnitude, situated within 30 on either side of the ecliptic, and so to afford "a sure basis for drawing conclusions with respect to the changes going on in the starry heavens."[1578]

It is tolerably safe to predict that no work of its kind and for its purpose will ever again be undertaken. In a small part of one night stars can now be got to register themselves more numerously and more accurately than by the eye and hand of the most skilled observer in the course of a year. Fundamental catalogues, constructed by the old, time-honoured method, will continue to furnish indispensable starting-points for measurement; and one of especial excellence was published by Professor Newcomb in 1899;[1579] but the relative places of the small crowded stars--the sidereal [Greek: hoi pholloi]--will henceforth be derived from their autographic statements on the sensitive plate. Even the secondary purpose--that of asteroidal discovery--served by detailed stellar enumeration, is more surely attained by photography than by laborious visual comparison. For planetary movement betrays itself in a comparatively short time by turning the imprinted image of the object affected by it from a dot into a trail.

In the arduous matter of determining star distances progress has been steady, and bids fair to become rapidly accelerated. Together, yet independently, Gill and Elkin carried out, at the Cape Observatory in 1882-83, an investigation of remarkable accuracy into the parallaxes of nine southern stars. One of these was the famous Alpha Centauri, the distance of which from the earth was ascertained to be just one-third greater than Henderson had made it. The parallax of Sirius, on the other hand, was doubled, or its distance halved; while Canopus proved to be quite immeasurably remote--a circ.u.mstance which, considering that, among all the stellar mult.i.tude, it is outshone only by the radiant Dog-star, gives a stupendous idea of its real splendour and dimensions.

Inquiries of this kind were, for some years, successfully pursued at the observatory of Dunsink, near Dublin. Annual perspective displacements were by Dr. Brunnow detected in several stars, and in others remeasured with a care which inspired just confidence. His parallax for Alpha Lyrae (013") was authentic, though slightly too large (Elkin's final results gave Pi = 0082"); and the received value for the parallax of the swiftly travelling star "Groombridge 1,830" scarcely differs from that arrived at by him in 1871 (Pi = 009"). His successor as Astronomer-Royal for Ireland, Sir Robert Stawell Ball (now Lowndean Professor of Astronomy in the University of Cambridge), has done good service in the same department. For besides verifying approximately Struve's parallax of half a second of arc for 61 Cygni, he refuted, in 1811, by a sweeping search for (so-called) "large"

parallaxes, certain baseless conjectures of comparative nearness to the earth, in the case of red and temporary stars.[1580] Of 450 objects thus cursorily examined, only one star of the seventh magnitude, numbered 1,618 in Groombridge's Circ.u.mpolar Catalogue, gave signs of measurable vicinity. Similarly, a reconnaissance among rapidly moving stars lately made by Dr. Chase with the Yale heliometer[1581] yielded no really large, and only eight appreciable parallaxes among the 92 subjects of his experiments.

A second campaign in stellar parallax was undertaken by Gill and Elkin in 1887. But this time the two observers were in opposite hemispheres.

Both used heliometers. Dr. Elkin had charge of the fine instrument then recently erected in Yale College Observatory; Sir David Gill employed one of seven inches, just constructed under his directions, in first-rate style, by the Repsolds of Hamburg. Dr. Elkin completed in 1888 his share of the more immediate joint programme, which consisted in the determination, by direct measurement, of the average parallax of stars of the first magnitude. It came out, for the ten northern luminaries, after several revisions, 0098", equivalent to a light-journey of thirty-three years. The deviations from this average were, indeed, exceedingly wide. Two of the stars, Betelgeux and Alpha Cygni, gave no certain sign of any perspective shifting; of the rest, Procyon, with a parallax of 0334", proved the nearest to our system. At the mean distance concluded for these ten brilliant stars, the sun would show as of only fifth magnitude; hence it claims a very subordinate rank among the suns of s.p.a.ce. Sir David Gill's definitive results were published in 1900.[1582] As the average parallax of the eleven brightest stars in the southern hemisphere, they gave 013", a value enhanced by the exceptional proximity of Alpha Centauri. Yet four of these conspicuous objects--Canopus, Rigel, Spica, and Beta Crucis--gave no sign of perspective response to the annual change in our point of view. The list included eleven fainter stars with notable proper motions, and most of these proved to have fairly large parallaxes. Among other valuable contributions to this difficult branch may be instanced Bruno Peter's measurements of eleven stars with the Leipzig heliometer, 1887-92;[1583] Kapteyn's application of the method by differences in right ascension to fifteen stars observed on the meridian 1885-89;[1584]

and Flint's more recent similar determinations at Madison, Wisconsin.[1585]

The great merit of having rendered photography available for the sounding of the celestial depths belongs to Professor Pritchard. The subject of his initial experiment was 61 Cygni. From measurements of 200 negatives taken in 1886, he derived for that cla.s.sic star a parallax of 0438", in satisfactory agreement with Ball's of 0468". A detailed examination convinced the Astronomer-Royal of its superior accuracy to Bessel's result with the heliometer. The Savilian Professor carried out his project of determining all second magnitude stars to the number of about thirty,[1586] conveniently observable at Oxford, obtaining as the general outcome of the research an average parallax of 0056", for objects of that rank. But this value, though in itself probable, cannot be accepted as authoritative, in view of certain inaccuracies in the work adverted to by Jacoby,[1587] Hermann Davis, and Gill. The method has, nevertheless, very large capabilities. Professor Kapteyn showed, in 1889,[1588] the practicability of deriving parallaxes wholesale from plates exposed at due intervals, and applied his system, in 1900, with encouraging success, to a group of 248 stars.[1589] The apparent absence of spurious shiftings justified the proposal to follow up the completion of the Astrographic Chart with the initiation of a photographic "Parallax Durchmusterung."

Observers of double stars are among the most meritorious, and need to be among the most patient and painstaking workers in sidereal astronomy.

They are scarcely as numerous as could be wished. Dr. Doberck, distinguished as a computer of stellar orbits, complained in 1882[1590]

that data sufficient for the purpose had not been collected for above 30 or 40 binaries out of between five and six hundred certainly or probably within reach. The progress since made is ill.u.s.trated by Mr. Gore's useful Catalogue of Computed Binaries, including fifty-nine entries, presented to the Royal Irish Academy, June 9, 1890.[1591] Few have done more towards supplying the deficiency of materials than the late Baron Ercole Dembowski of Milan. He devoted the last thirty years of his life, which came to an end January 19, 1881, to the revision of the Dorpat Catalogue, and left behind him a store of micrometrical measures as numerous as they are precise.

Of living observers in this branch, Mr. S. W. Burnham is beyond question the foremost. While pursuing legal avocations at Chicago, he diverted his scanty leisure by exploring the skies with a 6-inch telescope mounted in his back-yard; and had discovered, in May, 1882, one thousand close and mostly very difficult double stars.[1592] Summoned as chief a.s.sistant to the new Lick Observatory in 1888, he resumed the work of his predilection with the 36-inch and 12-inch refractors of that establishment. But although devoting most of his attention to much-needed remeasurements of known pairs, he incidentally divided no less than 274 stars, the majority of which lay beyond the resolving power of less keen and effectually aided eyesight. One of his many interesting discoveries was that of a minute companion to Alpha Ursae Majoris (the first Pointer), which already gives unmistakable signs of orbital movement round the shining orb it is attached to. Another pair, Kappa Pegasi, detected in 1880, was found in 1892 to have more than completed a circuit in the interim.[1593] Its period of a little over eleven years is the shortest attributable to a _visible_ binary system, except that of Delta Equulei, provisionally determined by Professor Hussey in 1900 at 57 years,[1594] and indicated by spectroscopic evidence to be of uncommon brevity.[1595] Burnham's Catalogue of 1,290 Double Stars, discovered by him from 1871 to 1899,[1596] is a record of unprecedented interest. Nearly all the 690 pairs included in it, 2" or less than 2" apart, must be physically connected; and they offer a practically unlimited field for investigation; while the notes, diagrams, and orbits appended profusely to the various entries, are eminently helpful to students and computers.

The author is continuing his researches at the Yerkes Observatory, having quitted the Lick establishment in 1892. The first complete enrolment of southern double stars was made by Mr. R. T. A. Innes in 1899.[1597] The couples enumerated, twenty-one per cent. of which are separated by less than one second of arc, are 2,140 in number. They include 305 discovered by himself. Dr. See gathered a rich harvest of nearly 500 new southern pairs with the Lowell 24-inch refractor in 1897.[1598] Professor Hough's discoveries in more northerly zones amount to 623;[1599] Hussey's at Lick to 350; and Aitken's already to over 300.

There is as yet no certainty that the stars of 61 Cygni form a true binary combination. Mr. Burnham, indeed, holds them to be in course of definitive separation; and Professor Hall's observations at Washington, 1879 to 1891, although favouring their physical connection, are far from decisive on the point.[1600] Dr. Wilsing, from certain anomalous displacements of their photographed images, concluded in 1893[1601] the presence of an invisible third member of the system, revolving in a period of twenty-two months; but the effects noticed by him were probably illusory.

Important series of double-star observations were made by Perrotin at Nice in 1883-4;[1602] by Hall, with the 26-inch Washington equatoreal, 1874 to 1891;[1603] by Schiaparelli from 1875 onward; by Glasenapp, O.

Stone, Leavenworth, Seabroke, and many besides. Finally, Professor Hussey's revision of the Pulkowa Catalogue[1604] is a work of the _teres atque rotundus_ kind, which leaves little or nothing to be desired. The methods employed in double-star determinations remain, at the beginning of the twentieth century, essentially unchanged. The camera has scarcely encroached upon this part of the micrometer's domain.[1605]