Astronomers of To-day and Their Work

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Gall & Inglis, 1905 - 261 pages
 

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Page 60 - And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord God, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day...
Page 10 - On the evening of the 29th of August, 1864, I directed the telescope for the first time to a planetary nebula in Draco. The reader may now be able to picture to himself to some extent the feeling of excited suspense, mingled with a degree of awe, with which, after a few moments of hesitation, I put my eye to the spectroscope. Was I not about to look into a secret place of creation ? I looked into the spectroscope.
Page 33 - the dark lines of the spectrum," he says, "and the spectrum itself, gradually faded away, until all at once, as suddenly as a bursting rocket shoots out its stars, the whole field of view was filled with bright lines, more numerous than one could count.
Page 48 - They are, as it were, inflated masses of rare and intensely incandescent gas. Hence the stars do not differ in mass so widely as in luminosity. 3. The bluest and most luminous stars are situate mainly in the region of the Milky Way. There is some reason to suspect that in this region the more densely the stars are agglomerated the larger and more luminous they are. 4. That collection of stars which we call the universe is limited in extent.
Page 65 - all self-luminous bodies in the celestial space are composed either of swarms of meteorites or of masses of meteoric vapour produced by heat. The heat is brought about by the condensation of meteor swarms, due to gravity, the vapour being finally condensed into a solid globe.
Page 66 - XVI. In recorded time there has been no such thing as a world on fire, or the collision of masses of matter as large as the earth, to say nothing of masses...
Page 126 - Where are the souls to whom the spectacle of starry night is not an eloquent discourse ? Where are those who have not been sometimes arrested in the presence of the bright worlds which hover over our heads, and who have not sought for the key of the great enigma of creation ? The solitary hours of night are in truth the most beautiful of all our hours, those in which we have the faculty of placing ourselves in intimate communication with great and holy Nature.
Page 187 - ... of magnitude was determined on each plate by comparing the photographic intensity of the images of a number of stars with the magnitudes as observed with the eye by various observers. Thus on each plate the magnitude was reduced to a visual scale. It does not follow from this that the magnitudes 1 This work of Kapteyn offers a remarkable example of the spirit which animates the born investigator of the heavens. Although the work was officially that of the British Government, the years of toil...
Page 97 - These stars revolve around their common centre of gravity in an elliptic orbit whose semiaxis major is six times the diameter of the stars. The plane of the orbit passes through the sun ; the eccentricity is 0.2475, ar|d the line of apsides is inclined at an angle of 4° to the line of sight...
Page 152 - The numbers of stars and systems really existing, but invisible to us, may be practically infinite. Could we speed our flight through space on angel wings beyond the confines of our limited universe to a distance so great that the interval which separates us from the remotest fixed star might be considered as merely a step on our celestial journey, what further creations might not then be revealed to our wondering vision ? Systems of a higher order might...

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