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Neptune has a diameter of 39,793 miles, consequently he is nearly 200 times larger than the earth, and may be seen with a telescope of moderate power. His motion is retrograde at present, and six times slower than that of the earth. At so great a distance from the sun it can only have the oth part of the light and heat the earth receives; but having a satellite, the deficiency of light may in some measure be supplied.

The prediction may now be transferred from Uranus to Neptune, whose perturbations may reveal the existence of a planet still further removed, which may for ever remain beyond the reach of telescopic vision-yet its mass, the form and position of its orbit, and all the circumstances of its motion may become known, and the limits of the solar system may still be extended hundreds of millions of miles.

The mean distance of Neptune from the sun has subsequently proved to be only 2893 millions of miles, and the period of his revolution 166 years, so that Baron Bode's law, of the interval between the orbits of any two planets being twice as great as the inferior interval and half of the superior, fails in the case of Neptune, though it was useful on the first approximation to his motions; and since Bode's time it has led to the discovery of fiftyfive telescopic planets revolving between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, some by chance, others by a systematic search on the faith that these minute planets are fragments of a larger body that has exploded, because their distances from the sun are nearly the same; the lines of the nodes of some of their orbits terminate in the same points of the heavens, and the inclinations of their orbits are such as might have taken place from their mutual disturbances at the time of the explosion, and while yet they were near enough for their forms to affect their motions. The orbits of the more recently discovered asteroids show that this hypothesis is untenable.

The tables of Mars, Venus, and even those of the sun, have been greatly improved, and still engage the attention of our Astronomer Royal, Mr. Airy, and other eminent astronomers. We are chiefly indebted to the German astronomers for tables of the four older telescopic planets, Vesta, Juno, Ceres, and Pallas; the others have only been discovered since the year 1845.

The determination of the path of a planet when disturbed by all the others, a problem which has employed the talents of the

greatest astronomers, from Newton to the present day, is only successfully accomplished with regard to the older planets, which revolve in nearly circular orbits, but little inclined to the plane of the ecliptic. When the excentricity and inclination of the orbits are great, their analysis fails, because the series expressing the co-ordinates of the bodies become extremely complicated, and do not converge when applied to comets and the telescopic planets. This difficulty has been overcome by Sir John Lubbock, and other mathematicians, who have the honour of having completed the theory of planetary motion, which becomes every day of more importance, from the new planets that have been discovered, and also with regard to comets, many of which return to the sun at regular intervals, and from whose perturbations the masses of the planets will be more accurately determined, and the retarding influence of the ethereal medium better known.

SECTION IX.

Saturn's Rings

Rotation of the Sun and Planets Periods of the Rotation of the Moon and other Satellites equal to the Periods of their Revolutions - Form of Lunar Spheroid - Libration, Aspect, and Constitution of the Moon Rotation of Jupiter's Satellites.

THE oblate form of several of the planets indicates rotatory motion. This has been confirmed in most cases by tracing spots on their surface, by which their poles and times of rotation have been determined. The rotation of Mercury is unknown, on account of his proximity to the sun; that of the new planets has not yet been ascertained. The sun revolves in twenty-five days and ten hours about an axis which is directed towards a point halfway between the pole-star and a of Lyra, the plane of rotation being inclined by 7° 30', or a little more than seven degrees, to the plane of the ecliptic: it may therefore be concluded that the sun's mass is a spheroid, flattened at the poles. From the rotation of the sun, there was every reason to believe that he has a progressive motion in space, a circumstance which is confirmed by observation. But, in consequence of the reaction of the planets, he describes a small irregular orbit about the centre of gravity of the system, never deviating from his position by more than twice his own diameter, or a little more than seven times the distance of the moon from the earth. The sun and all his attendants rotate from west to east, on axes that remain nearly parallel to themselves (N. 140) in every point of their orbit, and with angular velocities that are sensibly uniform (N. 141). Although the uniformity in the direction of their rotation is a circumstance hitherto unaccounted for in the economy of nature, yet, from the design and adaptation of every other part to the perfection of the whole, a coincidence so remarkable cannot be accidental. And, as the revolutions of the planets and satellites are also from west to east, it is evident that both must have arisen from the primitive cause which determined the planetary motions.* Indeed, La Place has computed the probability to be

The satellites of the two great planets on the farthest verge of the solar system form a singular exception to this law.

as four millions to one that all the motions of the planets, both of rotation and revolution, were at once imparted by an original common cause, but of which we know neither the nature nor the epoch.

The larger planets rotate in shorter periods than the smaller planets and the earth. Their compression is consequently greater, and the action of the sun and of their satellites occasions a nutation in their axes and a precession of their equinoxes (N. 147) similar to that which obtains in the terrestrial spheroid, from the attraction of the sun and moon on the prominent matter at the equator. Jupiter revolves in less than ten hours round an axis at right angles to certain dark belts or bands, which always cross his equator. (See Plate 1.) This rapid rotation occasions a very great compression in his form. His equatorial axis exceeds his polar axis by 6000 miles, whereas the difference in the axes of the earth is only about twenty-six and a half. It is an evident consequence of Kepler's law of the squares of the periodic times of the planets being as the cubes of the major axes of their orbits, that the heavenly bodies move slower the farther they are from the sun. In comparing the periods of the revolutions of Jupiter and Saturn with the times of their rotation, it appears that a year of Jupiter contains nearly ten thousand of his days, and that of Saturn about thirty thousand Saturnian days.

The appearance of Saturn is unparalleled in the system of the world. He is a spheroid nearly 1000 times larger than the earth, surrounded by a ring even brighter than himself, which always remains suspended in the plane of his equator: and, viewed with a very good telescope, it is found to consist of two concentric rings, divided by a dark band. The exterior ring, as seen through Mr. Lassell's great equatorial at Malta, has a darkstriped band through the centre, and is altogether less bright than the interior ring, one half of which is extremely brilliant; while the interior half is shaded in rings like the seats in an amphitheatre. Mr. Lassell made the remarkable discovery of a dark transparent ring, whose edge coincides with the inner edge of the interior ring, and which occupies about half the space between it and Saturn. He compares it to a band of darkcoloured crape drawn across a portion of the disc of the planet, and the part projected upon the blue sky is also transparent. At the time these observations were made at Malta, Captain Jacob discovered the transparent ring at Madras. It is conjectured to be

fluid; even the luminous rings cannot be very dense, since the density of Saturn himself is known to be less than the eighth part of that of the earth. A transit of the ring across a star might reveal something concerning this wonderful object. The ball of Saturn is striped by belts of different colours. At the time of these observations the part above the ring was bright white; at his equator there was a ruddy belt divided in two, above which were belts of a bluish green alternately dark and light, while at the pole there was a circular space of a pale colour. (See Plate 2.) The mean distance of the interior part of the double ring from the surface of the planet is about 22,240 miles, it is no less than 33,360 miles broad, but, by the estimation of Sir John Herschel, its thickness does not much exceed 100 miles, so that it appears like a plane. By the laws of mechanics, it is impossible that this body can retain its position by the adhesion of its particles alone. It must necessarily revolve with a velocity that will generate a centrifugal force sufficient to balance the attraction of Saturn. Observation confirms the truth of these principles, showing that the rings rotate from west to east about the planet in ten hours and a half, which is nearly the time a satellite would take to revolve about Saturn at the same distance. Their plane is inclined to the ecliptic, at an angle of 28° 10′ 44′′-5; in consequence of this obliquity of position, they always appear elliptical to us, but with an excentricity so variable as even to be occasionally like a straight line drawn across the planet. In the beginning of October, 1832, the plane of the rings passed through the centre of the earth; in that position they are only visible with very superior instruments, and appear like a fine line across the disc of Saturn. About the middle of December, in the same year, the rings became invisible, with ordinary instruments, on account of their plane passing through the sun. In the end of April, 1833, the rings vanished a second time, and reappeared in June of that year. Similar phenomena will occur as often as Saturn has the same longitude with either node of his rings. Each side of these rings has alternately fifteen years of sunshine and fifteen years of darkness.

It is a singular result of theory, that the rings could not maintain their stability of rotation if they were everywhere of uniform thickness; for the smallest disturbance would destroy the equilibrium, which would become more and more deranged,

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