Recreations in Astronomy:With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work
With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work
9781465543790
pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
All sciences are making an advance, but Astronomy is moving at the double-quick. Since the principles of this science were settled by Copernicus, four hundred years ago, it has never had to beat a retreat. It is rewritten not to correct material errors, but to incorporate new discoveries. Once Astronomy treated mostly of tides, seasons, and telescopic aspects of the planets; now these are only primary matters. Once it considered stars as mere fixed points of light; now it studies them as suns, determines their age, size, color, movements, chemical constitution, and the revolution of their planets. Once it considered space as empty; now it knows that every cubic inch of it quivers with greater intensity of force than that which is visible in Niagara. Every inch of surface that can be conceived of between suns is more wave-tossed than the ocean in a storm. The invention of the telescope constituted one era in Astronomy; its perfection in our day, another; and the discoveries of the spectroscope a third—no less important than either of the others. While nearly all men are prevented from practical experimentation in these high realms of knowledge, few have so little leisure as to be debarred from intelligently enjoying the results of the investigations of others
