The Observatory, Volume 8

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Editors of the Observatory, 1885
 

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Page 285 - SCHELLEN'S SPECTRUM ANALYSIS, in its application to Terrestrial Substances and the Physical Constitution of the Heavenly Bodies. Translated by JANE and C. LASSELL; edited, with Notes, by W. HUGGINS, LL.D. FRS With 13 Plates (6 coloured) and 223 Woodcuts. 8vo. price 28s. CELESTIAL OBJECTS for COMMON TELESCOPES.
Page 202 - Having brought the telescope to the parallel of Saturn, I discovered a sixth satellite of that planet ; and also saw the spots upon Saturn, better than I had ever seen them before, so that I may date the finishing of the 4O-feet telescope from that time.
Page 179 - ... as that in which the planets were formed. After having thus sketched M. Faye's theory in its main outlines, Professor Darwin points out that no reference is made to the possible effect of tides in the evolution of the solar system, a part of the subject which has been so ably worked out by Professor Darwin himself. He has shown that the hypothesis that tidal friction has had free play in the past leads to a remarkable quantitative co-ordination of the several elements of the earth's rotation...
Page 324 - ... In 1877, when discussing the phenomena of Nova Cygni, I advanced the view that meteoritic collisions were in all probability the cause of them. Almost, if not quite, the last view to which we have to refer is due to Mr. WHS Monck, who suggested in 1885 that new stars are dark (or faintly luminous) bodies which acquire a short-lived brilliancy by rushing through some of the gaseous masses which exist in space.
Page 148 - Hastings has based his revival of this long discarded negative theory upon the behaviour of a coronal line which he saw, in his spectroscope, change in length east and west of the Sun during the progress of the eclipse at Caroline Island. His view appears to rest on the negative foundation that Fresnel's theory of diffraction may not apply in the case of a total eclipse, and that at such great distances there is a possibility that the interior of the shadow...
Page 269 - January i the public clock and other mean solar clocks were put forward twelve hours so as to show Greenwich civil time starting at midnight, and reckoning from oh to 24h, which •would correspond with the Universal time recommended by the Washington Conference. The change from astronomical to civil reckoning has also been made in all the internal work of the Observatory, and has been carried out without any difficulty. Greenwich civil time is found to be more convenient on the whole for the purposes...
Page 151 - ... ejected to great heights above the photosphere, and often with velocities not far removed from that which would be needed to set it free from the sun's attraction, and very probably in the same electric state as the photosphere, might so come under this assumed electric repulsion as to be blown upwards, and to take on forms such as those seen in the corona ; the greatest distances to which the coronal streamers have been traced are small as compared with the extent of the tails of comets, but...
Page 151 - ... rapidly lose heat; but, on the other hand, liquid or solid particles, whether originally carried up as such, or subsequently formed by condensation, would absorb the sun's heat, and at coronal distances would soon rise to a temperature not...
Page 148 - This view has been supported by Mr. Proctor, on the ground that there must be such streams crowding richly together in the Sun's neighbourhood. 6. The view of the corona suggested by Sir William Siemens in his solar theory. It has been suggested, even, that the corona is 60 complex a phenomenon that there may be an element of truth in every one of these hypotheses.
Page 64 - The meeting then proceeded to the election of Officers and Council for the ensuing year, when the following Fellows were elected : — President.

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