Astrolabe

“ The astrolabe can also be used to discover (but only in an imperfect and approximate manner) the four cardinal points of the compass (ii. 29) . We can also compare the altitude of a planet with that of the sun (ii. 30) . We can find in what part of the horizon the sun rises (ii. 31) ; and in what direction to look for a conjunction of the sun and moon (ii. 32) ; also near what point of the compass the sun is at any given hour (ii. 33) . ”

“ There had, indeed, been in use for some time a land astrolabe for finding the latitude of a place, and it was but a natural advance that this instrument should be adapted for use on board ship, so that the mariner might be able to ascertain his position on the vast expanse of trackless ocean. We are all most ready to admire and extol the men and the ships which made such daring voyages and discoveries in the past; but I submit that nothing like adequate recognition has been paid to the essential value of the astrolabe and cross-staff, or their successor, the modern sextant. ”

“ I own, that it is not impossible to traverse the high seas without a compass, and that very resolute people might have undertaken to seek after the new world by conducting themselves simply by the stars. The Astrolabe being known to the ancients, it might strike them they could leave France or Spain, and sail to the west, by keeping the polar star always to the right, and by frequent soundings might have kept nearly in the same latitude ”

“ Their Knowledge of the motion of the Heavens, for which the Arabians and the other Eastern Nations have been so deservedly famous, as their Astronomical Tables of the Longitude and Latitude of the fixed Stars, and of the appulse of the Moon to them, fully evince, is now very mean, and is chiefly studied for the use of Judiciary Astrology. The great Instrument they make use of is an Astrolabe, with which they make very imperfect Observations, having no such thing as a Quadrant or Sextant, much less a Telescope, or any mechanical Engine, to direct and assist them in their Calculation. ”

“ The upper part, above the Horizon Obliquus, is marked with circles of altitude (i. 18) , crossed by incomplete arcs of azimuth tending to a common centre, the zenith (i. 19) . The lower part of the same plate is marked with arcs denoting the twelve planetary hours (i. 20) .
At the back of the astrolabe revolved the 'rule,' made of metal, and fitted with sights, represented in Fig. 3 (i. 13) . At the front of it revolved the 'label,' represented in Fig. 6 (i. 22) . ”

“ If a person can take an altitude with an astrolabe, knows the names of the planets and their different mansions, and a few technical phrases, and understands the astrological almanacs that are annually published, he deems himself entitled to offer his services to all who wish to consult him ”

“ They will fix on a day for a great man to start on a journey or arrive at a place, and the man will be careful to follow the astrologer’s direction, for they have a great belief in bad and good luck. The rules by which the astrologers make their calculations are very complicated; strange to say, there are many of them who really believe in their own profession. Each has his astrolabe of brass or silver; some of the brass ones are very large and handsome: I have known as much as one thousand kerans paid for a good one. ”

“ For by þat same altitude shal thou se that same sterre, & non othir / for þere ne wolle non othir altitude accorde þerto.'
30. Alhabor; i.e. Sirius or the Dog-star, as is evident from the fact of its being represented by a dog's head on the Astrolabe; see also the table of stars marked on the Astrolabe (in MS. Camb. Univ. Lib. li. 3. 3, fol. 70, back) , which gives the declination 15° S, the latitude 39° S, and places the star in Cancer. ”

“ The same school-friend sometimes took me to the Observatory, to see old Professor d'Arrest--a refined and sapient man--and there, for the first time, I saw the stellar heavens through a telescope. I had learnt astronomy at school, but had lacked talent to attain any real insight into the subject. Now the constellations and certain of the stars began to creep into my affections; they became the nightly witnesses of my joys and sorrows, all through my life; the sight of them sometimes comforted me when I felt lonely and forsaken in a foreign land. ”

“ The observer stations himself at his transit instrument, not looking at all parts of the sky, but waiting to observe the stars as they pass the meridian. The clock is going all the time. A star is seen to be approaching the meridian: the observer directs the telescope so as to observe the star when it actually crosses the meridian, and then looks into the telescope. In the telescope he sees the wires, and sees the image of the star travelling along, and he observes the passage of the star over every wire. ”

“ You need not, however, wait for an opportunity to look through giant telescopes, for my small student's telescope, only four feet long, which we carry out on to the lawn, will show you endless unseen wonders; while your hand telescopes, and even a common opera-glass, will show many features on the face of the moon, and enable you to see the crescent of Venus, Jupiter's moons, and Saturn's rings, besides hundreds of stars unseen by the naked eye. ”

“ THE ASTROLOGER'S NIECE I AM not sorry that I became an astrologer. The work is monotonous but not wearing, and the hours are short. As an apprentice I was a hard student, and frequently consulted the stars; but now, without conceit, I think I speak within bounds in saying that I know all there is to know about planets, stars, asteroids, comets, nebulae, and horoscopes, and twice as much as any other astrologer of my weight; so I seldom refresh my memory by going, through my telescope, directly to nature. ”

“ But there shine the congregated stars, mingling their rays in a message of light, that comes to us across the gulf, proclaiming their brotherhood with our own glorious sun. Mathematicians can not unravel the interlocking intricacies of their orbits, and some would, perhaps a priori, have said that such a system was impossible, but the telescope has revealed them, and there they are! ”

“ Thus the constellations form a pictorial scroll of legendary history and mythology, and possess a deep interest independent of the science of astronomy. For their history and for the legends connected with them, the reader who desires a not too detailed résumé, may consult Astronomy with the Naked Eye, and for guidance in finding the constellations, Astronomy with an Opera-glass, or Round the Year with the Stars. The quickest way to learn the constellations is to engage the aid of some one who knows them already, and can point them out in the sky. ”

“ Whenever you have a chance of looking at the heavens through a telescope, you should ask to be shown what is called a double star. There are many stars in the heavens which present no remarkable appearance to the unaided eye, but which a good telescope at once shows to be of quite a complex nature. These are what we call double stars, in which two quite distinct stars are placed so close together that the unaided eye is unable to separate them. ”

“ The astronomer directs his telescope to the heavens, records the position of the planets, and hopes to discover the influences worlds exert upon one another. He explores space to obtain data to enable him to delineate a map of the visible solar universe, but the instruments he has at command are so imperfect, and mind is so feeble that, like mockery seems his attempt to study behind the facts connected with the motions and conditions of the nearest heavenly bodies, and he can not offer an explanation of the beginning or cessation of their movements. ”

“ But smaller instruments reveal only the in-running star streams and the sprinkling of stellar points over the main aggregation, which cause it to sparkle like a cloud of diamond dust transfused with sunbeams. The appearance of flocking together that those uncountable thousands of stars present calls up at once a picture of our lone sun separated from its nearest stellar neighbor by a distance probably a hundred times as great as the entire diameter of the spherical space within which that multitude is congregated. ”

“ You may know something of the witchery of the heavens even with a little telescope of three to five inches aperture!" "Pleasures of the Telescope" is popular in style rather than technical. For setting forth "the chief attractions of the starry heavens," a complete set of star-maps is included, showing "all the stars visible to the naked eye in the regions of sky represented, and in addition some stars that can only be seen with optical aid." ”

“ Ample means had enabled him to completely outfit an observatory, with a powerful telescope, at our summer residence. Here he would spend hours gazing into the abyss of space. He saw things up there the trained, professional astronomer never saw, or ever hoped to see—colliding suns, formation of temporary stars, the rejuvenescence of dying worlds, and gaseous explosions in the Milky Way. ”

“ Ptolemy, Tycho, Kepler and Morin were all practiced astrologers. The Nautical Almanac was first published in 1767 by Dr. Neville Maskelyne, and afterwards greatly improved in 1834. The Connaissance des Temps was published in 1699. Whence, think you, did the astrologers obtain their information regarding the positions of the planets prior to these years of authorized publication? They calculated them for themselves. Without astronomy there could be no Astrology. They kept astronomy alive. ”

“ Such of its members as more specially cultivate practical astronomy in the National Observatories of the capital, are charged to make all Observations which may contribute to the progress of that science, and procure new means for rectifying the tables of the Sun, as well as those which make known the position of the stars, and particularly the tables of the Moon, the improvement of which so essentially concerns the safety of navigation. ”

“ Apparently any person coming from any part of the world may have access to the astrologer and ask him any questions he pleases. The authors of these works could not have written the books for the special use and benefit of any particular astrologer and confined their answers to the questions which would be put to him during his lifetime. But it is not admitted by these astrologers that the whole history of the human race for a period of 4,320,000 years is contained in these volumes. ”

“ After learning what the orifice was for, I always felt highly flattered when I found my old friend at home, although I sometimes had rather a curious sensation, in walking up the shore, feeling that far away the single brilliant eye of old Sipes might be twinkling at me through the rickety old spy glass. Astronomers tell of unseen stars in the universe, which are found only with the most powerful telescopes. These orbs, isolated in awful space, may be scrutinizing our sphere with the same curiosity as that behind the little spotter in the dim distance on the beach. ”

“ It seems at first sight strange, but it is true, as Laplace long since pointed out, that the skillful astronomer, by merely watching the movements of our satellite, and without leaving his observatory, can obtain the solution of problems which, attacked by other methods, require tedious and expensive expeditions to remote corners of the earth. ”

“ He got a good glass for six hundred dollars.
His new job gave him leisure for star-gazing.
Often he bid me come and have a look
Up the brass barrel, velvet black inside,
At a star quaking in the other end.
I recollect a night of broken clouds
And underfoot snow melted down to ice,
And melting further in the wind to mud.
Bradford and I had out the telescope.
We spread our two legs as we spread its three,
Pointed our thoughts the way we pointed it,
And standing at our leisure till the day broke,
Said some of the best things we ever said. [19]
That telescope was christened the Star-splitter,
30 Because it didn’t do a thing but split ”

“ But he complains that the astrologers magnify the influence of the stars at the expense of God’s control of nature and of human free will. “They ascribe everything to their constellations.” Some have even reached such a degree of madness that they believe that “an image can be formed in accordance with the constellations so that it will receive the spirit of life at the nod of the stars and will [Pg 165] reveal the secrets of hidden truth.” ”

“ What now, dear reader, shall we make out of our telescope? Shall we make a Mercury's magic-wand to cross the liquid ether with, and, like Lucian, [10] lead a colony to the uninhabited evening star, allured by the sweetness of the place? ”

“ Nevertheless, thus clad, I trod interstellar space, exalted by the knowledge that I was bound on vast adventure, where, at the end, I would find all the cosmic formulae and have made clear to me the ultimate secret of the universe. In my hand I carried a long glass wand. It was borne in upon me that with the tip of this wand I must touch each star in passing. And I knew, in all absoluteness, that did I but miss one star I should be precipitated into some unplummeted abyss of unthinkable and eternal punishment and guilt. ”

“ Astronomy to the selfish becomes astrology; ”

“ By the aid of a telescope any one may behold this in a manner which so distinctly appeals to the senses that all the disputes which have tormented philosophers through so many ages are exploded at once by the irrefragable evidence of our eyes, and we are freed from wordy disputes upon this subject, for the Galaxy is nothing else but a mass of innumerable stars planted together in clusters. ”