The Reminiscences of an Astronomer Part 14

At the Springfield meeting of the American a.s.sociation for the Advancement of Science, in 1859, I read a paper explaining the method, and showed by a curve on the blackboard the changes in the orbit of one of the asteroids for a period, I think, of several hundred thousand years,--"beyond the memory of the oldest inhabitants"--said one of the local newspapers. A month later it was extended to three other asteroids, and the result published in the "Astronomical Journal." In the following spring, 1860, the final results of the completed work were communicated to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in a paper "On the Secular Variations and Mutual Relations of the Orbits of the Asteroids." The question of the possible variations in the orbits and the various relations amongst them were here fully discussed. One conclusion was that, so far as our present theory could show, the orbits had never pa.s.sed through any common point of intersection.

The whole trend of thought and research since that time has been toward the conclusion that no such cataclysm as that looked for ever occurred, and that the group of small planets has been composed of separate bodies since the solar system came into existence. It was, of course, a great disappointment not to discover the cataclysm, but next best to finding a thing is showing that it is not there. This, it may be remarked, was the first of my papers to attract especial notice in foreign scientific journals, though I had already published several short notes on various subjects in the "Astronomical Journal."

At this point I may say something of the problems of mathematical astronomy in the middle of the last century. It is well known that we shall at least come very near the truth when we say that the planets revolve around the sun, and the satellites around their primaries according to the law of gravitation. We may regard all these bodies as projected into s.p.a.ce, and thus moving according to laws similar to that which governs the motion of a stone thrown from the hand. If two bodies alone were concerned, say the sun and a planet, the orbit of the lesser around the greater would be an ellipse, which would never change its form, size, or position.

That the orbits of the planets and asteroids do change, and that they are not exact ellipses, is due to their attraction upon each other.

The question is, do these mutual attractions completely explain all the motions down to the last degree of refinement? Does any world move otherwise than as it is attracted by other worlds?

Two different lines of research must be brought to bear on the question thus presented. We must first know by the most exact and refined observations that the astronomer can make exactly how a heavenly body does move. Its position, or, as we cannot directly measure distance, its direction from us, must be determined as precisely as possible from time to time. Its course has been mapped out for it in advance by tables which are published in the "Astronomical Ephemeris," and we may express its position by its deviation from these tables. Then comes in the mathematical problem how it ought to move under the attraction of all other heavenly bodies that can influence its motion. The results must then be compared, in order to see to what conclusion we may be led.

This mathematical side of the question is of a complexity beyond the powers of ordinary conception. I well remember that when, familiar only with equations of algebra, I first looked into a book on mechanics, I was struck by the complexity of the formulae.

But this was nothing to what one finds when he looks into a work on celestial mechanics, where a single formula may fill a whole chapter.

The great difficulty arises from the fact that the constant action upon a planet exerted at every moment of time through days and years by another planet affects its motion in all subsequent time.

The action of Jupiter upon our earth this morning changes its motion forever, just as a touch upon a ball thrown by a pitcher will change the direction of the ball through its whole flight.

The wondrous perfection of mathematical research is shown by the fact that we can now add up, as it were, all these momentary effects through years and centuries, with a view of determining the combined result at any one moment. It is true that this can be done only in an imperfect way, and at the expense of enormous labor; but, by putting more and more work into it, investigating deeper and deeper, taking into account smaller and smaller terms of our formulae, and searching for the minutest effects, we may gradually approach, though we may never reach, absolute exactness. Here we see the first difficulty in reaching a definite conclusion. One cannot be quite sure that a deviation is not due to some imperfection in mathematical method until he and his fellows have exhausted the subject so thoroughly as to show that no error is possible. This is hard indeed to do.

Taking up the question on the observational side, a source of difficulty and confusion at once presented itself. The motions of a heavenly body from day to day and year to year are mapped out by comparative observations on it and on the stars. The question of the exact positions of the stars thus comes in. In determining these positions with the highest degree of precision, a great variety of data have to be used. The astronomer cannot reach a result by a single step, nor by a hundred steps. He is like a sculptor chiseling all the time, trying to get nearer and nearer the ideal form of his statue, and finding that with every new feature he chisels out, a defect is brought to light in other features. The astronomer, when he aims at the highest mathematical precision in his results, finds Nature warring with him at every step, just as if she wanted to make his task as difficult as possible. She alters his personal equation when he gets tired, makes him see a small star differently from a bright one, gives his instrument minute twists with heat and cold, sends currents of warm or cold air over his locality, which refract the rays of light, asks him to keep the temperature in which he works the same as that outside, in order to avoid refraction when the air enters his observing room, and still will not let him do it, because the walls and everything inside the room, being warmed up during the day, make the air warmer than it is outside. With all these obstacles which she throws in his way he must simply fight the best he can, exerting untiring industry to eliminate their effects by repeated observations under a variety of conditions.

A necessary conclusion from all this is that the work of all observing astronomers, so far as it could be used, must be combined into a single whole. But here again difficulties are met at every step.

There has been, in times past, little or no concert of action among astronomers at different observatories. The astronomers of each nation, perhaps of each observatory, to a large extent, have gone to work in their own way, using discordant data, perhaps not always rigidly consistent, even in the data used in a single establishment.

How combine all the astronomical observations, found scattered through hundreds of volumes, into a h.o.m.ogeneous whole?

What is the value of such an attempt? Certainly if we measure value by the actual expenditure of nations and inst.i.tutions upon the work, it must be very great. Every civilized nation expends a large annual sum on a national observatory, while a still greater number of such inst.i.tutions are supported at corporate expense. Considering that the highest value can be derived from their labors only by such a combination as I have described, we may say the result is worth an important fraction of what all the observatories of the world have cost during the past century.

Such was, in a general way, the great problem of exact astronomy forty or fifty years ago. Its solution required extended cooperation, and I do not wish to give the impression that I at once attacked it, or even considered it as a whole. I could only determine to do my part in carrying forward the work a.s.sociated with it.

Perhaps the most interesting and important branch of the problem concerned the motion of the moon. This had been, ever since the foundation of the Greenwich Observatory, in 1670, a specialty of that inst.i.tution. It is a curious fact, however, that while that observatory supplied all the observations of the moon, the investigations based upon these observations were made almost entirely by foreigners, who also constructed the tables by which the moon's motion was mapped out in advance. The most perfect tables made were those of Hansen, the greatest master of mathematical astronomy during the middle of the century, whose tables of the moon were published by the British government in 1857. They were based on a few of the Greenwich observations from 1750 to 1850.

The period began with 1750, because that was the earliest at which observations of any exactness were made. Only a few observations were used, because Hansen, with the limited computing force at his command,--only a single a.s.sistant, I believe,--was not able to utilize a great number of the observations. The rapid motion of the moon, a circuit being completed in less than a month, made numerous observations necessary, while the very large deviations in the motion produced by the attraction of the sun made the problem of the mathematical theory of that motion the most complicated in astronomy.

Thus it happened that, when I commenced work at the Naval Observatory in 1861, the question whether the moon exactly followed the course laid out for her by Hansen's tables was becoming of great importance.

The same question arose in the case of the planets. So from a survey of the whole field, I made observations of the sun, moon, and planets my specialty at the observatory. If the astronomical reader has before him the volume of observations for 1861, he will, by looking at pages 366-440, be able to infer with nearly astronomical precision the date when I reported for duty.

For a year or two our observations showed that the moon seemed to be falling a little behind her predicted motion. But this soon ceased, and she gradually forged ahead in a much more remarkable way.

In five or six years it was evident that this was becoming permanent; she was a little farther ahead every year. What could it mean?

To consider this question, I may add a word to what I have already said on the subject.

In comparing the observed and predicted motion of the moon, mathematicians and astronomers, beginning with Laplace, have been perplexed by what are called "inequalities of long period." For a number of years, perhaps half a century, the moon would seem to be running ahead, and then she would gradually relax her speed and fall behind. Laplace suggested possible causes, but could not prove them.

Hansen, it was supposed, had straightened out the tangle by showing that the action of Venus produced a swinging of this sort in the moon; for one hundred and thirty years she would be running ahead and then for one hundred and thirty years more falling back again, like a pendulum. Two motions of this sort were combined together.

They were claimed to explain the whole difficulty. The moon, having followed Hansen's theory for one hundred years, would not be likely to deviate from it. Now, it was deviating. What could it mean?

Taking it for granted, on Hansen's authority, that his tables represented the motions of the moon perfectly since 1750, was there no possibility of learning anything from observations before that date?

As I have already said, the published observations with the usual instruments were not of that refined character which would decide a question like this. But there is another cla.s.s of observations which might possibly be available for the purpose.

Millions of stars, visible with large telescopes, are scattered over the heavens; tens of thousands are bright enough to be seen with small instruments, and several thousand are visible to any ordinary eye. The moon, in her monthly course around the heavens, often pa.s.ses over a star, and of course hides it from view during the time required for the pa.s.sage. The great majority of stars are so small that their light is obscured by the effulgence of the moon as the latter approaches them. But quite frequently the star pa.s.sed over is so bright that the exact moment when the moon reaches it can be observed with the utmost precision. The star then disappears from view in an instant, as if its light were suddenly and absolutely extinguished. This is called an occultation.

If the moment at which the disappearance takes place is observed, we know that at that instant the apparent angle between the centre of the moon and the star is equal to the moon's semi-diameter.

By the aid of a number of such observations, the path of the moon in the heavens, and the time at which she arrives at each point of the path, can be determined. In order that the determination may be of sufficient scientific precision, the time of the occultation must be known within one or two seconds; otherwise, we shall be in doubt how much of the discrepancy may be due to the error of the observation, and how much to the error of the tables.

Occultations of some bright stars, such as Aldebaran and Antares, can be observed by the naked eye; and yet more easily can those of the planets be seen. It is therefore a curious historic fact that there is no certain record of an actual observation of this sort having been made until after the commencement of the seventeenth century. Even then the observations were of little or no use, because astronomers could not determine their time with sufficient precision. It was not till after the middle of the century, when the telescope had been made part of astronomical instruments for finding the alt.i.tude of a heavenly body, and after the pendulum clock had been invented by Huyghens, that the time of an occultation could be fixed with the required exactness. Thus it happens that from 1640 to 1670 somewhat coa.r.s.e observations of the kind are available, and after the latter epoch those made by the French astronomers become almost equal to the modern ones in precision.

The question that occurred to me was: Is it not possible that such observations were made by astronomers long before 1750? Searching the published memoirs of the French Academy of Sciences and the Philosophical Transactions, I found that a few such observations were actually made between 1660 and 1700. I computed and reduced a few of them, finding with surprise that Hansen's tables were evidently much in error at that time. But neither the cause, amount, or nature of the error could be well determined without more observations than these. Was it not possible that these astronomers had made more than they published? The hope that material of this sort existed was encouraged by the discovery at the Pulkowa Observatory of an old ma.n.u.script by the French astronomer Delisle, containing some observations of this kind. I therefore planned a thorough search of the old records in Europe to see what could be learned.

The execution of this plan was facilitated by the occurrence, in December, 1870, of an eclipse of the sun in Spain and along the Mediterranean. A number of parties were going out from this country to observe it, two of which were fitted out at the Naval Observatory.

I was placed in charge of one of these, consisting, practically, of myself. The results of my observation would be of importance in the question of the moon's motion, but, although the eclipse was ostensibly the main object, the proposed search of the records was what I really had most in view. In Paris was to be found the most promising mine; but the Franco-Prussian war was then going on, and I had to wait for its termination. Then I made a visit to Paris, which will be described in a later chapter.

At the observatory the old records I wished to consult were placed at my disposal, with full liberty not only to copy, but to publish anything of value I could find in them. The mine proved rich beyond the most sanguine expectation. After a little prospecting, I found that the very observations I wanted had been made in great numbers by the Paris astronomers, both at the observatory and at other points in the city.

And how, the reader may ask, did it happen that these observations were not published by the astronomers who made them? Why should they have lain unused and forgotten for two hundred years? The answer to these questions is made plain enough by an examination of the records.

The astronomers had no idea of the possible usefulness and value of what they were recording. So far as we can infer from their work, they made the observations merely because an occultation was an interesting thing to see; and they were men of sufficient scientific experience and training to have acquired the excellent habit of noting the time at which a phenomenon was observed. But they were generally satisfied with simply putting down the clock time.

How they could have expected their successors to make any use of such a record, or whether they had any expectations on the subject, we cannot say with confidence. It will be readily understood that no clocks of the present time (much less those of two hundred years ago) run with such precision that the moment read from the clock is exact within one or two seconds. The modern astronomer does not pretend to keep his clock correct within less than a minute; he determines by observation how far it is wrong, on each date of observation, and adds so much to the time given by the clock, or subtracts it, as the case may be, in order to get the correct moment of true time.

In the case of the French astronomers, the clock would frequently be fifteen minutes or more in error, for the reason that they used apparent time, instead of mean time as we do. Thus when, as was often the case, the only record found was that, at a certain hour, minute, and second, by a certain clock, _une etoile se cache par la lune_, a number of very difficult problems were presented to the astronomer who was to make use of the observations two centuries afterward.

First of all, he must find out what the error of the clock was at the designated hour, minute, and second; and for this purpose he must reduce the observations made by the observer in order to determine the error. But it was very clear that the observer did not expect any successor to take this trouble, and therefore did not supply him with any facilities for so doing. He did not even describe the particular instrument with which the observations were made, but only wrote down certain figures and symbols, of a more or less hieroglyphic character. It needed much comparison and examination to find out what sort of an instrument was used, how the observations were made, and how they should be utilized for the required purpose.

Generally the star which the moon hid was mentioned, but not in all cases. If it was not, the identification of the star was a puzzling problem. The only way to proceed was to calculate the apparent position of the centre of the moon as seen by an observer at the Paris Observatory, at the particular hour and minute of the observation.

A star map was then taken; the points of a pair of dividers were separated by the length of the moon's radius, as it would appear on the scale of the map; one point of the dividers was put into the position of the moon's centre on the map, and with the other a circle was drawn. This circle represented the outline of the moon, as it appeared to the observer at the Paris Observatory, at the hour and minute in question, on a certain day in the seventeenth century.

The star should be found very near the circ.u.mference of the circle, and in nearly all cases a star was there.

Of course all this could not be done on the spot. What had to be done was to find the observations, study their relations and the method of making them, and copy everything that seemed necessary for working them up. This took some six weeks, but the material I carried away proved the greatest find I ever made. Three or four years were spent in making all the calculations I have described.

Then it was found that seventy-five years were added, at a single step, to the period during which the history of the moon's motion could be written. Previously this history was supposed to commence with the observations of Bradley, at Greenwich, about 1750; now it was extended back to 1675, and with a less degree of accuracy thirty years farther still. Hansen's tables were found to deviate from the truth, in 1675 and subsequent years, to a surprising extent; but the cause of the deviation is not entirely unfolded even now.

During the time I was doing this work, Paris was under the reign of the Commune and besieged by the national forces. The studies had to be made within hearing of the besieging guns; and I could sometimes go to a window and see flashes of artillery from one of the fortifications to the south. Nearly every day I took a walk through the town, occasionally as far as the Arc. As my observations during these walks have no scientific value, I shall postpone an account of what I saw to another chapter.

One curious result of this work is that the longitude of the moon may now be said to be known with greater accuracy through the last quarter of the seventeenth century than during the ninety years from 1750 to 1840. The reason is that, for this more modern period, no effective comparison has been made between observations and Hansen's tables.

Just as this work was approaching completion I was called upon to decide a question which would materially influence all my future activity. The lamented death of Professor Winlock in 1875 left vacant the directorship of the Harvard Observatory. A month or two later I was quite taken by surprise to receive a letter from President Eliot tendering me this position. I thus had to choose between two courses.

One led immediately to a professorship in Harvard University, with all the distinction and worldly advantages a.s.sociated with it, including complete freedom of action, an independent position, and the opportunity of doing such work as I deemed best with the limited resources at the disposal of the observatory. On the other hand was a position to which the official world attached no importance, and which brought with it no worldly advantages whatever.

I first consulted Mr. Secretary Robeson on the matter. The force with which he expressed himself took me quite by surprise. "By all means accept the place; don't remain in the government service a day longer than you have to. A scientific man here has no future before him, and the quicker he can get away the better." Then he began to descant on our miserable "politics" which brought about such a state of things.

Such words, coming from a sagacious head of a department who, one might suppose, would have been sorry to part with a coadjutor of sufficient importance to be needed by Harvard University, seemed to me very suggestive. And yet I finally declined the place, perhaps unwisely for myself, though no one who knows what the Cambridge Observatory has become under Professor Pickering can feel that Harvard has any cause to regret my decision. An apology for it on my own behalf will seem more appropriate.

On the Cambridge side it must be remembered that the Harvard Observatory was then almost nothing compared with what it is now.

It was poor in means, meagre in instrumental outfit, and wanting in working a.s.sistants; I think the latter did not number more than three or four, with perhaps a few other temporary employees. There seemed little prospect of doing much.

On the Washington side was the fact that I was bound to Washington by family ties, and that, if Harvard needed my services, surely the government needed them much more. True, this argument was, for the time, annulled by the energetic a.s.surance of Secretary Robeson, showing that the government felt no want of any one in its service able to command a university professorship. But I was still pervaded by the optimism of youth in everything that concerned the future of our government, and did not believe that, with the growth of intelligence in our country, an absence of touch between the scientific and literary cla.s.ses on the one side, and "politics"

on the other, could continue. In addition to this was the general feeling by which I have been actuated from youth--that one ought to choose that line of activity for which Nature had best fitted him, trusting that the operation of moral causes would, in the end, right every wrong, rather than look out for place and preferment.

I felt that the conduct of government astronomy was that line of activity for which I was best fitted, and that, in the absence of strong reason to the contrary, it had better not be changed.

In addition to these general considerations was the special point that, in the course of a couple of years, the directorship of the Nautical Almanac would become vacant, and here would be an unequaled opportunity for carrying on the work in mathematical astronomy I had most at heart. Yet, could I have foreseen that the want of touch which I have already referred to would not be cured, that I should be unable to complete the work I had mapped out before my retirement, or to secure active public interest in its continuance, my decision would perhaps have been different.

On September 15, 1877, I took charge of the Nautical Almanac Office.

The change was one of the happiest of my life. I was now in a position of recognized responsibility, where my recommendations met with the respect due to that responsibility, where I could make plans with the a.s.surance of being able to carry them out, and where the countless annoyances of being looked upon as an important factor in work where there was no chance of my being such would no longer exist.

Practically I had complete control of the work of the office, and was thus, metaphorically speaking, able to work with untied hands.

It may seem almost puerile to say this to men of business experience, but there is a current notion, spread among all cla.s.ses, that because the Naval Observatory has able and learned professors, therefore they must be able to do good and satisfactory work, which may be worth correcting.

I found my new office in a rather dilapidated old dwelling-house, about half a mile or less from the observatory, in one of those doubtful regions on the border line between a slum and the lowest order of respectability. If I remember aright, the only occupants of the place were the superintendent, my old friend Mr. Loomis, senior a.s.sistant, who looked after current business, a proof-reader and a messenger. All the computers, including even one copyist, did their work at their homes.

A couple of changes had to be made in the interest of efficiency.

The view taken of one of these may not only interest the reader, but give him an idea of what people used to think of government service before the era of civil service reform. The proof-reader was excellent in every respect except that of ability to perform his duty. He occupied a high position, I believe, in the Grand Army of the Republic, and thus wielded a good deal of influence.

When his case was appealed to the Secretary of the Navy, apellant was referred to me. I stated the trouble to counsel,--he did not appear to see figures, or be able to distinguish whether they were right or wrong, and therefore was useless as a proof-reader.