Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 24Priestley and Weale, 1864 Includes lists of additions to the Society's library, usually separately paged. |
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Common terms and phrases
accuracy Admiral Smyth angle aperture appearance April Astronomer Royal atmosphere Autumn bright calculated Catalogue chronographic Chun Tsew Comet considerable correction crater distance double star drawing Dunkin Earth edge Equatoreal eye-and-ear eye-piece faculæ given granulations Greenwich heliometer Herschel inches Inferior Conjunction instrument June latitude light London longitude Lunar magnitude March mean measures Memoirs meridian meteors method minute Monthly Notices Moon Moon's limb nearly Nebula night object object-glass obtained Occultation optical orbit Otto Struve paper Parallax pencil penumbra photographs photosphere planet portion position present probable error Prof Professor proper motions refraction remarkable Right Ascension ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY Royal Observatory Satellite seen Sept shooting-stars Sir John Herschel's Sirius small star Solar Eclipses solar motion stratum Struve Sun's disk surface telescope tion transits umbra visible W. R. Dawes willow-leaves Winnecke wires
Popular passages
Page 212 - For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water, whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished; but the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.
Page 34 - The part of the Sun's disk not occupied by spots is far from uniformly bright. Its ground is finely mottled with an appearance of minute dark dots or pores, which, when attentively watched, are found to be in a constant state of change. There is nothing which represents so faithfully this appearance as the slow subsidence of some flocculent chemical precipitates in a transparent fluid, when viewed perpendicularly from above.
Page 34 - I have often observed it with a good refractor of only 2\ inches' aperture and a power of 60. Examined with a large aperture, such as 6 or 8 inches, it becomes evident that the surface is principally made up of luminous masses imperfectly separated from each other by rows of minute dark dots — the intervals between these dots being extremely small and occupied by a substance decidedly less luminous than the general surface.
Page 66 - ... as also in the details of the penumbra itself, and most especially are they seen clearly defined in the details of " the bridges " as I term those bright streaks which are so frequently seen stretching across from side to side over the dark part of the spot.
Page 140 - Sun's surface in a small field, and to examine the identical objects with every variety of power, and under circumstances fit for the use of 400 to 600 with advantage. I thus arrived at the decided conviction that these brilliant objects were merely different conditions of the surface of the comparatively large luminous clouds themselves — ridges, waves, hills, knolls, or whatever else they might be called — differing in form, in brilliancy, and probably in elevation...
Page 216 - Airy's zenith sector, was the arrangement for making successive observations in two positions of the instrument, face east and face west, at the same transit. The second principle was the substitution of a level or system of levels for the usual plumb-line. The third principle was the casting in one piece, as far as practicable, of each of the different parts of the instrument, in order to avoid the great number of screws and fastenings with which most instruments are hampered, and to secure, if...
Page 34 - ... also to put on record some results of a pretty constant scrutiny of solar phenomena with powerful and excellent telescopes during the last twelve or fifteen years. The mottled appearance of the solar surface requires no very large amount of optical power to render it visible. I have often observed it with a good refractor of only 2^ inches aperture and a power of 60.
Page 174 - That locality, therefore, is very favourable. ' Selecting, secondly, the parts of the Earth at which the duration of transit would be longest, it will be found that the choice is more limited, and the practical difficulties rather greater. For the acceleration of ingress at...
Page 184 - ... which we have seen is one of Carrington's dates of maximum sun spots. The following observation is unconnected with the aurora borealis. In examining the sun pictures taken with the Kew Heliograph under the superintendence of Mr. De la Rue, it appears to be a nearly universal law that the faculse belonging to a spot appear to the left of that spot, the motion due to the sun's rotation being across the picture from left to right.
Page 107 - I from z" to 3" or 4" long, by abont half that breadth ; the smallest of them having an area exceeding that of the British Isles. While these pages are passing through the printers' hands we hear of the confirmation of the existence of these strange entities, under convincing circumstances, by Mr. Stone, with the large Greenwich Refractor. To him the Sun's photosphere appeared as if covered with grains of rice. Perhaps, then, these particles are not quite so sharp as " willow-leaves" (NatmylA), nor...