J. Ellard Gore

“ Seen from Mercury, Venus would appear brighter than even we see it, and as it would be at its brightest when in opposition to the sun, and seen on a dark sky with a full face, it must present a magnificent appearance in the midnight sky of Mercury. The earth will also form a brilliant object, and the moon would be distinctly visible. The other planets would appear very much as they do to us, but with somewhat less brilliancy owing to their greater distance. ”

“ With reference to the rising and setting of the stars due to the earth’s rotation on its axis, the late Sir George B. Airy, Astronomer Royal of England, once said to a schoolmaster, “I should like to know how far your pupils go into the first practical points for which reading is scarcely necessary. Do they know that the stars rise and set? Very few people in England know it. I once had a correspondence with a literary man of the highest rank on a point of Greek astronomy, and found that he did not know it!” ”

“ A curious paradox with reference to binary stars has recently come to light. For many years it was almost taken for granted that the brighter star of a pair had a larger mass than the fainter component. This was a natural conclusion, as both stars are practically at the same distance from the earth. But it has been recently found that in some binary stars the fainter component has actually the larger mass! Thus, in the binary star ε Hydræ, the “magnitude” of the component stars are 3 and 6, indicating that the brighter star is about 16 times brighter than the fainter component. ”

“ In a paper on the “Aspects of American Astronomy,” Prof. Newcomb says, “A great telescope is of no use without a man at the end of it, and what the telescope may do depends more upon this appendage than upon the instrument itself. The place which telescopes and observatories have taken in astronomical history are by no means proportional to their dimensions. Many a great instrument has been a mere toy in the hands of its owner. ”

“ Let us suppose that the nebula has a mean density equal to that of atmospheric air. As water is about 773 times heavier than air, and the sun’s density is 1·4 (water = 1) we have the mass of the nebula equal to 1·16 × 1018 divided by 773 × 1·4, or about 1015 times the sun’s mass, which is still much greater than the probable combined mass of all the visible stars. As it seems unreasonable to suppose that the mass of an individual member of our sidereal system should exceed the combined mass of the remainder of the system, we seem compelled to further reduce the density of the Andromeda nebula. ”

“ The sun placed at the distance corresponding to 150,000 light years would, I find, shine as a star of less than the 23rd magnitude, a magnitude which would be invisible in the largest telescope that man could ever construct. But the combined light of 4 trillion of stars of even the 23rd magnitude would be equal to one of minus 23·5 magnitude, that is, 231⁄2 magnitude brighter than the zero magnitude, or not very much inferior to the sun in brightness. As the Andromeda nebula shines only as a star of about the 5th magnitude the hypothesis of an external universe seems to be untenable. ”

“ The “collision theory” which explained the sudden outburst of light by the meeting of two dark bodies in space, seems to be now abandoned by the best astronomers. The rapid cooling down of the supposed bodies indicated by the rapid decrease of light is quite inconsistent with this hypothesis.
The rapid diminution in the light of some of these “new stars” is very remarkable. Thus the new star which suddenly blazed out near the nucleus of the great nebula in Andromeda in August, 1885, faded down in 5 months from “the limit of visibility to the naked eye to that of a 26-inch telescope”! ”

“ It is said that a telescope of 1 inch aperture will show stars of the 2nd magnitude; 2 inches, stars of the 3rd magnitude; and 4 inches, stars of the 4th magnitude. But I cannot confirm this from personal observation. It may be so, but I have not tried the experiment.
Sir George Darwin says—
“Human life is too short to permit us to watch the leisurely procedure of cosmical evolution, but the celestial museum contains so many exhibits that it may become possible, by the aid of theory, to piece together, bit by bit, the processes through which stars pass in the course of their evolutions.” ”

“ I find that the earth would shine as a star about half as bright again as Venus at her brightest appears to us, and the moon about equal in brightness to Sirius! the two forming a superb “naked eye double star”—perhaps the finest sight of its kind in the solar system. [34]
Some of the earlier observers, such as La Hire, Fontana, Cassini, and Schröter, thought they saw evidence of mountains on Venus. Schröter estimated some of these to be 27 or 28 miles in height! but this seems very doubtful. Sir William Herschel severely attacked these supposed discoveries. ”

“ We may indeed be amazed at all that man has been able to find out, but the immeasurable magnitude of the undiscovered will throughout all time remain to humble his pride. Our children’s children will still be gazing and marvelling at the starry heavens, but the riddle will never be read. ”

“ Kapteyn thinks that “undoubtedly one of the greatest difficulties, if not the greatest of all, in the way of obtaining an understanding of the real distribution of the stars in space, lies in our uncertainty about the amount of loss suffered by the light of the stars on its way to the observer.” [469] He says, “There can be little doubt in my opinion, about the existence of absorption in space, and I think that even a good guess as to the order of its amount can be made. For, first [Pg 322] we know that space contains an enormous mass of meteoric matter. ”

“ Many a small one has become famous. Twenty years ago there was here in your city [Chicago] a modest little instrument which, judged by its size, could not hold up its head with the great ones even of that day. It was the private property of a young man holding no scientific position and scarcely known to the public. And yet that little telescope is to-day among the famous ones of the world, having made memorable advances in the astronomy of double stars, and shown its owner to be a worthy successor of the Herschels and Struves in that line of work. ”

“ As there are no observed facts as to what exists beyond the farthest stars, the mind of the astronomer is a complete blank on the subject. Popular imagination can fill up the blank as it pleases.” With these remarks I fully concur.
In his address to the British Association, Prof. G. H. Darwin (now Sir George Darwin) said—
“Man is but a microscopic being relatively to astronomical space, and he lives on a puny planet circling round a star of inferior rank. ”

“ The increased brightness of the Milky Way in Aquila is accounted for by the fact that Herschel’s “gages” show an increased number of stars, and hence the brightness in Aquila and Sagittarius does not necessarily imply that the Milky Way is nearer to us in those parts, but that it is richer in small stars than in other regions.
Easton is of opinion that the annular hypothesis of the Milky Way is inconsistent with our present knowledge of the galactic phenomena, and he suggests that its actual constitution resembles more that of a spiral nebula. ”

“ There is no reason to think that “temporary” or new stars ever appear a second time.
Admiral Smyth has well said, “It checks one’s pride to recollect that if our sun with the whole system of planets, asteroids, and moons, and comets were to be removed from the spectator [Pg 146] to the distance of the nearest fixed star, not one of them would be visible, except the sun, which would then appear but as a star of perhaps the 2nd magnitude. ”

“ It was computed by Olbers that if a comet having a mass of 1⁄2000th of the earth’s mass—which would form a globe of about 520 miles in diameter and of the density of granite—collided with the earth, with a velocity of 40 miles a second, our globe would be shattered into fragments. [200] But that any comet has a solid nucleus of this size seems very doubtful; and we may further say that the collision of the earth with any comet is highly improbable.
It seems to be a common idea that harvests are affected by comets, and even “comet wines” are sometimes spoken of. ”

“ There are tens of thousands of men who could be successful in all the ordinary walks of life, hundreds who could wield empires, thousands who could gain wealth, for one who could take up this astronomical problem with any hope of success. ”

“ M. Sebastian Albrecht finds that in the short-period variable star known as T Vulpeculæ (and other variables of this class, such as Y Ophiuchi) , there can be no eclipse to explain the variation of light (as in the case of Algol) . The star is a spectroscopic binary, it is true, but the maximum [Pg 174] of light coincides with the greatest velocity of approach in the line of sight, and the minimum with the greatest velocity of recession. Thus the light curve and the spectroscopic velocity curve are very similar in shape, but one is like the other turned upside down. ”

“ The Arabians called the bright star Fomalhaut “in the mouth of the southern fish al-dhifda al-auval, ‘the first Frog,’ as the bright one on the southern point of the tail of Kîtus [Cetus] is called al-dhifda al-tsani [β Ceti] , ‘the second Frog.’” Fomalhaut was also called al-zhalim, “the male ostrich.”
Al-Sufi says, “Some of the Arabians state that a ship is situated to the south of Aquarius.” The stars in the Southern Fish (Piscis Australis) seem to be here referred to.
The constellation Pisces, the Fishes, is the last of the “signs of the Zodiac.” ”

“ A halo may form round the sun as well as the moon ... but a halo is more frequently noticed round the moon for the reason that we are too much dazzled by the sun’s light to distinguish faint colours surrounding its disc, and to see them it is necessary to look through smoked glass, or view the sun by reflection from the surface of still water, by which its brilliancy is very much reduced.”... ”

“ Pliny says that Hipparchus “ventured to count the stars, a work arduous even for the Deity.” But this was quite a mistaken idea. Those visible to the naked eye are comparatively few in number, and the enumeration of those visible in an opera-glass—which of course far exceed those which can be seen by unaided vision—is a matter of no great difficulty. Those visible in a small telescope of 23⁄4 inches aperture have all been observed and catalogued; and even those shown on photographs taken with large telescopes can be easily counted. ”

“ This eminent astronomer finds that stars with measurable proper motions—and therefore in all probability relatively near the earth—have mostly spectra of the solar type, and seem to cluster round “a point adjacent to the sun, in total disregard to the position of the Milky Way,” and that stars with little or no proper motion collect round the galactic plain. ”

“ We must, therefore, conclude that the nebula, whatever it may be, is not an external universe, but forms a member of our own sidereal system.
In Sir John Herschel’s catalogue of Nebulæ and Clusters of Stars, published in 1833, in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, there are many curious objects mentioned. Of these I have selected the following:—
No. 496 is described as “a superb cluster which fills the whole field; stars 9, 10 ... 13 magnitude and none below, but the whole ground of the sky on which it stands is singularly dotted over with infinitely minute points.” ”

“ With reference to the difficulty of seeing Mercury, owing to its proximity to the sun, Admiral Smyth says, “Although Mercury is never in opposition to the earth, he was, when in the house of Mars, always viewed by astrologers as a most malignant planet, and one full of evil influences. The sages stigmatized him as a false deceitful star (sidus dolosum) , the eternal torment of astronomers, eluding them as much as terrestrial mercury did the alchemists ”

“ When the seeing is bad there is a spurious limb to Jupiter that well might give the appearance of transparency at the occultation of a satellite. But under first-class conditions the limb of Jupiter is perfectly opaque. It is quibbling and begging the question altogether to say the phenomenon of transparency may be a rare one and so have escaped my observations. ”