The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1859-04-07

regarded, as, upon the whole, the most interesting
of the stellar phenomena With the nakeu eye
YOU see nothing; with a glass of moderate iorce
YOU see a nebulous speck under a very high
! power. YOU behold a group literally OF thousands
of stars. When you reflect, that each OF .~ese
stars is a sun like our own, and as Tar as we can
reason analogically. the centre OF a solar system
like that to which we belong, the most vigorous
imagination sinks under the stupendous NUMBER
and magnitude of the Universes comprehended IN
the cluster of Hercules. 1t is in reference 10 this
cluster, Of which he gives a striking engraved
illustration, that DIR. Nichoi, in his - Archltec-
ture of the Heavens makes the following h"-
pressiye remarks:
confirming by emphatic analogies his conceptions Of the
character Of our Stellar System, Herschei discovered that :
yond il, among the spaces to which It's own stars Z" y, ~
other gorgeous clusters are resting, separated ron eacn o'.ea
and from ours by gulfs, with which ING m AM nan n
small units on earth are with them One OF these stapenuoas
number /, as it might appear to the most powerful o. u inst 1.
ments. Even TO a good re teie s ! n the s varieties arr Of being that
speck must contain! Such, our earliest glance OF TINS new per-
ibronpb that fathomless ocean. Oun, with splendors that
seemed IinitabIe. only an unit amid unnImeer s, ' as ny we're me
wont to think OF one Of its own stars"
The Sc Penny C~yclopedia,' of which the scien-
tifc articles appear. for the most part, TO DE
executed bv very able hands, dismisses the Con-
steIlation Hercules with this remark : This
Constellation is situated between Draco, Bootes,
Ivra- and Orphiuchus; but as there is no star In
it larger than of the third magnitude, there IS
nothing Ue,Y remarkable about A." NOTHING VERY
REAaRHABLE ABOUT IT. only Il mighty group, not
of suns alone. but of the Solar Systems which
depend upon them. Nothing but ten thousand
Uniyerses. invisible to the naked eye, but revealed,
in the depths of the Heavens, by a powerful
glass, within the limits OF this Constellation
Nothing very remarkable. =.
But to return to the Comet. On the Ind OF
June 1858. it was seen as a faint nebulosity by
Professor Donati at Florence, in Italy, near the
star Lamda, in the Constellation of the Lion. Its
distance from the Sun was then about two hum
dred millions of miles that from the earth still
greater. Donati at first doubted whether this
comet was not the same as that discovered IN this
country in May, by MIR. III. p. Tuttie of the
Cambridge Observatory. Such, OF course was
not the case, but as soon as the disappearance OF
the moon admitted good observations, 1t was
detected nearly at the same time by three As
tronomers in the United States, each observer
being Ignorant of Donati's discovery. 1t was
seen by Mr.. III. p. futile at Cambridge, on the
evening of the 2Sth of June, and an accurate
determination of its place made the same night
at the Observatory in that place. On the 18TH
it was discovered by III. NJ. Parkhurst, Esq, at
Perth Amboy, in New Jersey, and on the LIST of
july by Miss Mitchell of Nantucket,-the lady
who had the good fortune to gain the Comet
medal of the King of Denmark. for the first dis
coyery of a telescope comet IN 1871, ana the
only lady to whom that medal was ever given:
Some difficulty was at first experienced in fixing
upon the probable path of the Comet, but by the
middle of August its future course and the great
increase of brightness which would take place as
it approached the Sun had been ascertained with
certainty. 1t was still, however, invisible to the
naked eye, and distinguishable from other tele-
scopic Comets only by the slowness OF Its motion
and the vivid light of its nucleus. Traces OF a
tail were seen on the Goth of August, and on the
29th it appeared to the naked eye as a hazy star.
For a few weeks it was seen both IN the morning
and evening sky, which led some to the opinion
- u - C,cat- 4 uaS OF this tipna
also supposed by some persons To be identical
with the Comet of 1864 and Of 1886. 1t has
since been ascertained that it is moving In an
orbit according to the mean Of six calculations)
of 2156 years, consequently that If ever seen be
fore by man, it was in the year 29S before our
era,-two years before the capture of Athens by
Demetrius Poliorcetes, and Just a quarter of a
century after the death of Alexander the Great.
On the 9th of September the curvature OF the
train was noticed for the first time, which after
ward acquired such expansion, and constituted
/ one of the most remarkable featul es of the Comet
The streamers detached from the principal train
first appeared on the 25th September and increased
in number and length and a succession OF most
extraordinary and some of them never before
observed phenomena in the nucleus. in Its imme-
date surroundings, and in the train, furnished
matter of observation the most intensely Interest
ing and curious, till the comet had passed its
perihelion. 1t was brightest on the 9Th of Octo-
( her. the dav before | saw it. Mr.. George Bond,
in drawing to Il close the admirable memoir to
which | have already alluded. and from which
such portions of this paper as were not matters
of personal observation have been taken, says:
"The Comet of Donat, although surpassed by many others
in size, has not often been equaIled in the intensity Of the light
Of the nucleus 1t woulG be difficult to instance any one of its
predecessors, which has combined 50 many attractive features p"
There is no branch of Science in which the
United States have made more rapid and substan-
tial progress than in Astronomy. Our Observa-
tories, observers, and geoIneters, now take rank
with those of Europe. Gibbon, after his magnifi-
cent enumeration of the seven appearances OF the
Comet of 1850, given in his Decline and Fall OF
the Roman Empire, adds, at the eighth period,
i'm the wear two thousand two hundred and fifty
five. the calculations of Bernouilli, Newton, and
HALEY, NAV perhaps be verified by the Astrono-
mers of some future Capital in the Siberian or
American wilderness" Ii is a somewhat singu-
lar circumstance, that, at a date nearly four hun
bred years in advance of that assumed by GIbbon,
the two largest refracting telescopes in the world
are found, the one in Russia and the other in
America and in either country n degree OF
astronomical skill equal to the highest operations
of the Science.
| had a good deal more, when | commenced
this paper, which i wished to say on the subject
of the Observatory at Cambridge and the labors
and discoveries of its director and his assistants
/ could not. however, do justice to the topic in
the space which remains to me in this number
and | must reserve it for a future opportunity.
We have reason to be grateful that, in the pro-
gress Of science, the superstitious alarms, once
excited by the appearance of comets, have wholly
ceased to be felt, by well informed persons. On
one occasion when a comet was approaching its
perihelion, it was said that the directors of the
Bank of England requested the municipal au-
thority to station fre-engines in Threadneedle
street. 1t is now supposed by astronomers that
the earth might pass through the tail of a comet,
and that fact not be perceived by its inhabitants
The comet is the body which would suffer by the
collision. That of Lexell so called was wholly
DETECTED from its orbit in 1867, by coming within
the attraction of Jupiter, which does not appear
to have been in the least affected by the approach
of the comet. But even if q collision were likely
to prove disastrous TO our planet, we have nc
more reason to apprehend that precise derange-
ment in the order of the Universe as established