Popular AstronomyHarper, 1878 - 566 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
accuracy angle aperture apparent motions astronomers atmosphere attraction axis cause celestial equator celestial sphere centre century circle comet Copernican system Copernicus described determined diameter direction disk distance diurnal motion earth entirely epicycle equal equator equinox eye-piece feet focus force glass gravitation heavenly bodies heavens hemisphere Herschel Hipparchus horizon inches instrument Jupiter Kepler known latitude latter length lens light longitude lunar magnifying power Mars mass mean measuring Mercury meridian meridian circle method miles minutes mirror moon moon's move nearly node object object-glass observations Observatory opposite orbit owing parallax pass perihelion photosphere planet planetary pole position prism Ptolemaic system Ptolemy rays reflector refracting refracting telescope result revolution revolving right ascension ring rotation satellites Saturn seen shown sidereal solar spectrum star sun's supposed surface telescope theory tion transit transit of Venus Uranus velocity Venus visible zenith
Popular passages
Page 491 - And time and place are lost ; where eldest Night And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold Eternal anarchy, amidst the noise Of endless wars, and by confusion stand...
Page 491 - Into this wild abyss, The womb of nature, and perhaps her grave, Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire, But all these in their pregnant causes mixed Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight, Unless the almighty Maker them ordain His dark materials to create more worlds...
Page 312 - He scarce had ceased, when the superior fiend Was moving toward the shore: his ponderous shield, Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round, Behind him cast; the broad circumference Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views, At evening, from the top of Fesole, Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, Rivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe.
Page 160 - Observer' at a salary of 100£ per annum, his duty being 'forthwith to apply himself with the most exact care and diligence to the rectifying the tables of the motions of the heavens and the places of the fixed stars, so as to find out the so much desired longitude of places for the perfecting the art of navigation.
Page 446 - I know, has hitherto been noticed by no one, and, indeed, cannot be well observed except with large telescopes. In the sword of Orion are three stars quite close together. In 1656, as I chanced to be viewing the middle one of these with the telescope, instead of a single star, twelve showed themselves (a not uncommon circumstance). Three of these almost touched each other, and, with four others, shone through a nebula, so that the space around them seemed far brighter than the rest of the heavens,...
Page 70 - The square of the period of a planet is proportional to the cube of its mean distance from the Sun.
Page 508 - The principle in question may be readily shown in the following way: if a globular, gaseous mass is condensed to one-half its primitive diameter, the central attraction upon any part of its mass will be increased fourfold, while the surface upon which this attraction is exercised will be reduced to one-fourth. Hence the pressure per unit of surface will be increased sixteen times, while the density will be increased only eight times.
Page 263 - coming down upon us from the north, would, in thirty seconds after they had crossed the St. Lawrence, be in the Gulf of Mexico, carrying with them the whole surface of the continent in a mass, not simply of ruin, but of glowing vapor, in which the vapors arising from the dissolution of the materials composing the cities of Boston, New York, and Chicago would be mixed in a single indistinguishable cloud.
Page 515 - At the present time we can only say that the nebular hypothesis is indicated by the general tendencies of the laws of nature, that it has not been proved to be inconsistent with any fact, that it is almost a necessary consequence of the only theory by which we can account for the origin and conservation of the sun's heat, but that it rests on the assumption that this conservation is to be explained by the laws of nature as we now see them in operation. Should any one be skeptical as to the sufficiency...
Page 103 - Place an astronomer," says Mr. Newcomb, " on board a ship ; blindfold him ; carry him by any route to any ocean on the globe, whether under the tropics or in one of the frigid zones ; land him on the wildest rock that can be found; remove his bandage, and give him a chronometer regulated to Greenwich or Washington time, a transit instrument with the proper appliances, and the necessary books and tables, and in a single clear night he can tell his position within a hundred yards by observations of...