E. Walter Maunder

“ For we must remember that, though our own atmosphere is a hindrance to our observing, yet the atmosphere of the planet into which we are looking is a greater hindrance still. Like the lace curtains of the window of a house, it is a much greater obstacle to looking inward than to looking outward, and as the perfect distinctness with which we see the Moon is a proof that it is practically without an atmosphere, so the great detail visible on Mars bears unmistakable testimony to the slightness of the atmospheric veil around that planet. ”

“ Total eclipses of the Sun have well repaid all the efforts made to observe them. It is a wonderful sight to watch the blackness of darkness slowly creeping over the very fountain of light until it is wholly and entirely hidden; to watch the colours fade away from the landscape and a deathlike, leaden hue pervade all nature, and then to see a silvery, star-like halo, flecked with bright little rose-coloured flames, flash out round the black disc that has taken the place of the Sun. ”

“ The heathen idea is that the orbs of heaven are divine, or at least that each expresses a divinity. This does not in itself seem an unnatural idea when we consider the great benefits that come to us through the instrumentality of the sun and moon. It is the sun that morning by morning rolls back the darkness, and brings light and warmth and returning life to men; it is the sun that rouses the earth after her winter sleep and quickens vegetation. It is the moon that has power over the great world of waters, whose pulse beats in some kind of mysterious obedience to her will. ”

“ We find, then, in this universe so far as we can know it, that Space is lavishly provided, Matter is lavishly scattered, Time is unsparingly drawn upon, but Life in any form, and especially in its highest form, is, relatively speaking, very sparsely given. That very circumstance surely points to the overwhelming importance of conscious, intelligent Life, and the insignificance of lifeless matter in comparison with it. We have to exhaust arithmetic in computing the size, the mass, the output of heat and light of our Sun, yet it is but the hearth-fire and lamp of terrestrial life ”

“ THE MOON is the one object in the heavens which does not disappoint a novice when he first sees it in the telescope. Every detail is hard, clear-cut, and sharp; it is manifest that we are looking at a globe, a very rough globe, with hills and mountains, plains and valleys, the whole in such distinct relief that it seems as if it might be touched. ”

“ And beside the enjoyment of all this entrancing spectacle of celestial beauty, the fortunate astronomer sits at his telescope and discovers—always he discovers.
This, or something like it, is a very popular conception of an astronomer's experiences and duty; and consequently many, when they are told that 'discoveries' are not made at Greenwich, are inclined to consider that the Observatory has failed in its purpose. An astronomer without 'discoveries' to his record is like an angler who casts all day and comes home without fish—obviously an idle or incompetent person. ”

“ Since this world from a distant standpoint must appear as a star, would not a star, if we could get near enough to it, show itself also as a world? This world teems with life; above all, it is the home of human life. Men and women, gifted with feeling, intelligence, and character, look upward from its surface and watch the shining members of the heavenly host. ”

“ Yet so vast is this company of five stars that it would take light seventy years, travelling at the rate of 186,000 miles in every second of time to go from the leading star, Merak—Beta of the Bear—to Mizar—Zeta of the Bear—the final brilliant of the five. So bright and great are these suns that they shine to us as gems of the second magnitude, and yet if our sun were placed amongst them at their distance from us he would be invisible to the keenest sight. ”

“ It has led us from a time when men were acquainted with only a few square miles of the Earth, and knew nothing of its size and shape, or of its relation to the moving lights which shone down from above, on to our present conception of our place in a universe of suns of which the vastness, glory, and complexity surpass our utmost powers of expression. The science began in the desire to use Sun, Moon, and stars as timekeepers, but as the exercise of ordered sight and ordered thought brought knowledge, knowledge began to be desired, not for any advantage it might bring, but for its own sake. ”

“ Thus MASKELYNE, the fifth Astronomer Royal, restricted his observations to some thirty-six stars, which were all that he needed for his Nautical Almanac, and these, with perhaps a few additions, would be sufficient for all purely practical ends.
But there is in man a restless, resistless passion for knowledge—for knowledge for its own sake—that is always compelling him to answer the challenge of the unknown. The secret hid behind the hills, or across the seas, has drawn the explorer in all ages; and the secret hid behind the stars has been a magnet not less powerful. ”

“ But let the watcher be ever so little too slow in setting his telescope, or ever so little late in placing himself at his eye-piece, and the star will have passed the wire, and as it smoothly, resistlessly moves on its inexorable way, will tell the tardy watcher in a language there is no mistaking, 'Lost moments can never be recalled.' The opportunity let slip, not until twenty-four hours have gone by will another chance come of observing that same star. ”

“ From the consideration of the planets in our own system, we have seen how stringent and how many are the conditions imposed for Life to be possible. Round our Sun there is but a narrow zone in which a habitable world may circle; in this zone there is room for but few worlds, and we actually know of three alone, the Earth, the Moon, and Venus. We know that the Earth can be and is inhabited; that the Moon is not and cannot be inhabited; and that Venus, though of habitable size, may yet be subject to the fatal disqualification of always turning the same face to the Sun. ”

“ Those colossal pyramids, huge and firm, with outlines as of rocks, and strength to bear the beating of the high sun full on their fiery flanks—why are they so light—their bases high over our heads, high over the heads of Alps? why will these melt away, not as the sun rises, but as he descends, and leave the stars of twilight clear, while the valley vapour gains again upon the earth like a shroud? ”

“ It is still impossible to foresee the course of weather change for long ahead; but the difference between the modern navigator, surely and confidently making a 'bee-line' across thousands of miles of ocean to his destination, and the timid sailor of old, creeping from point to point of land, is hardly greater than the contrast between the same two men, the one watching his barometer, the other trusting in the old wives' rhymes which afforded him his only indication as to coming storms. ”

“ But we are confined to this earth of ours, and they are so remote; we are so short-lived, and they are so long-enduring; that the difficulty of finding out much about them might well seem insuperable.
Yet these difficulties have been so far overcome that astronomy is the most advanced of all the sciences, the one in which our knowledge is the most definite and certain. All science rests on sight and thought, on ordered observation and reasoned deduction; but both sight and thought were earlier trained to the service of astronomy than of the other physical sciences. ”

“ This is what is meant when we speak of a world being “inhabited.” It would not, for example, at all content us if we could ascertain that Jupiter was covered by a shoreless ocean, rich in every variety of fish; or that the hard rocks of the Moon were delicately veiled by lichens. Just as no richness [Pg 3] of vegetation and no fulness and complexity of animal life would justify an explorer in describing some land that he had discovered as being “inhabited” if no men were there, so we cannot rightly speak of any other world as being “inhabited” if it is not the home of intelligent life. ”

“ Mathematical, or perhaps as we might better call it, planetary astrology, as we have it to-day, concerns itself with the apparent movements of the planets in the sense that it uses them as its material; just as a child playing in a library might use the books as building blocks, piling, it may be, a book of sermons on a history, and a novel on a mathematical treatise. Astrology does not contribute, has not contributed a single observation, a single demonstration to astronomy. It owes to astronomy all that it knows of mathematical processes and planetary positions. ”

“ Whether Jupiter appears with dark stripes upon its surface, or is uniformly illuminated, pertains as little to the inquiries of the astronomer; and its four moons are interesting to him only for the motions they have. To learn so perfectly the motions of the celestial bodies that for any specified time an accurate computation of these can be given—that was, and is, the problem which astronomy has to solve.'
There is a curious irony of progress which seems to delight in falsifying the predictions of even master minds as to the limits beyond which it cannot advance. ”

“ And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: He made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day. ”

“ It seems impossible to believe that Life, so rare a fruit of the universe, intelligent Life, conscious Life, to which the long course of evolution has been so manifestly leading up all through the long ages, should have [Pg 160] no better destiny than a final and hopeless extinction; that this Earth and all the efforts and aspirations of the long generations of men should have no worthier end than to swing, throughout the eternal ages, an empty, frozen heap of dust, circling round the extinct cinder that was once its Sun. If we look backward, we seem to discern clear signs of progress ”

“ Nay, what did Ptolemy want with a thousand stars, or Tamerlane's grandson, born, reared, and destined to die amidst a horde of savages, however splendid in their trappings? There is not, and there never was, any real, practical use for the great volumes of star-catalogues that weigh down the shelves of our libraries. The navigator and explorer need never see them at all. Why, then, were these pages compiled? Why have astronomers, from Hipparchus's time to the present, spent their lives in the weary routine-work of observing the places of tiny points in the stellar depths? ”

“ Newton brought out into clear statement the true conditions of motion. A body once moving, if acted upon by no force whatsoever, must continue to move forward in a straight line at exactly the same speed, and that for ever. It does not require any maintaining force to keep it going. If any change in its speed or in its direction takes place, that change must be due to the introduction of some further force.
This principle, that, if no force acts on a body in motion, it will continue to move uniformly in a straight line, is Newton's First Law of Motion. ”

“ But if Jupiter be a semi-Sun, still a source of heat, perhaps even of light, can it yield the means of life to its satellites? For Jupiter is sun-like, not merely in its own condition, but also in that it is the centre and ruler of a system of its own. We know already of eight satellites revolving round it.
Of these eight, only four—the four discovered by Galileo, in the first days of his possession of a telescope—need be considered; the other four are of the same order of size as the asteroids, and are indeed much smaller than Ceres. ”

“ Still less does the period of seven days fit precisely into month or season [24] or year; the week is marked out by no phase of the moon, by no fixed relation between the sun, the moon, or the stars. It is not a division of time that man would naturally adopt for himself; it runs across all the natural divisions of time.
What are the six days of creative work, and the seventh day—the Sabbath—of creative rest? They are not days of man, they are days of God; and our days of work and rest, our week with its Sabbath, can only be the figure and shadow of that week of God ”

“ So we have been led step by step from the mere desire to help the mariner to find his way across the trackless ocean, to the establishment of the secret law which rules the movements of every body of the universe, till at length we stand face to face with the mysteries of vast systems in the making, with the intimate structure of the stellar universe, with the apparently aimless, causeless wanderings of vast suns in lightning flight ”

“ The question naturally arises, "If the Sun, to which the Earth is indebted for nearly everything, passes through a change in its activity every eleven years or so, how is the Earth affected by it?" It would seem at first sight that the effect should be great and manifest. A sunspot, like that of February 1905, one thousand times as large as Europe, into which worlds as large as our Earth might be poured, like peas into a saucer, must mean, one might think, an immense falling off of the solar heat. ”

“ There are only two of the heavenly bodies that appear to be more than points of light, only two that show a surface to the naked eye, and the Sun, being so much the brighter of the two, and the obvious source of all our light and heat, and the fosterer of vegetation, readily takes the premier place in interest. In the present day we know too much about the Sun for anyone to suppose that it can be the home of organic life; but it is not many years since its habitability was seriously suggested even by so high an authority as Sir William Herschel. ”

“ We are forced therefore to the unexpected conclusion that it is practically impossible that Joshua could have been in any place from whence he could have seen, at one and the name moment; the sun low down in the sky over Gibeon, and the moon over the valley of Ajalon.
Is the narrative in error, then? Or have we been reading into it our own erroneous impression? Is there any other sense in which a man would naturally speak of a celestial body as being "over" some locality on the earth, except when both were together on his horizon? ”

“ There is a striking contrast between the great telescope and all the massive machinery for its direction and movement, and the objects on which it is directed—two little points of light separated by a delicate hair of darkness.
The observation is very unlike those of which we have hitherto spoken. The object is not to ascertain the actual position in the sky of the two stars, but their relative position to each other. A spider's thread of the finest strands is moved from one star to the other by turning an exquisitely fine screw ”

“ So catalogues of stars have been made, and made again, and enlarged and repeated; instruments of ever-increasing delicacy have been built in order to determine the positions of stars, and observations have been made with ever-increasing care and refinement. It is knowledge for its own sake that is longed for, knowledge that can only be won by infinite patience and care.
The chief instrument used in making a star catalogue is called a transit circle; two great stone pillars are set up, each carrying one end of an axis, and the axis carries a telescope. ”

“ The thought that each new day, beginning with a new outburst of light, was, in its degree, a kind of new creation, an emblem of the original act by which the world was brought into being, renders appropriate and beautiful the ascription of the term "morning stars" to those "sons of God," the angels. As the stars in the eastern sky are poetically thought of as "singing together" to herald the creation of each new day, so in the verses already quoted from the Book of Job, the angels of God are represented as shouting for joy when the foundations of the earth were laid. ”