Connecticut western news., 1879-11-19
Wonders in the Heavens
THE MOON NOT SUBJECT OF THE EARTH
 THE STARS DISTANCES.

THE STARS DISTANCES.
 Prof essc Richard A. Proctor in his lecture on "The Immens1ty of Space," says that very convenient way of fix ing the relative dimensions of the solar system is to imagine the earth as ball one inch in diameter. Then the sun would be three yards in diameter, and the distance between the two would be 324 yards. On such scale all the works of man on the earth would be invisible, and @ powerful microse )pe would be required to show the Himalaya Noun tains. The remotest member of the solar system yet discovered, Neptune, would on such scale he about five miles from the sun. re the sun, instead of the earth, be supposed to be one inch in diameter, then the earth would be less than the hundredth of an inch in diameter, and situated three yards from the sun, and the entire di- ameter of the solar system would be about 19O yards.
 Some of the methods by which the suns distance is measured were then explained. The means by which the surveyor works, Professor Proctor said, is his base l1ne. Give him 8 base line and the angles and he will tell you the distance of an inaccessible object. But the surveyor likes to get long base line to work from, so that he shall have no angle to deal with less than about 20 degrees. For this astronomers are obliged to say that their estimates of the suns distance may be 100000 or 3OO,OOO miles out of the way on one side or the other. Such an error is compar- atively slight, being in fact equal to on- ly about one.t third of the suns diameter, yet astron omers are trying hard to do away with it as far as possible.
 Professor Newcomb of Washington, the lecturer said, probably knows more about this subject of the suns distance than any other man, and he gives as the result of his calculations of the suns distance about ninety.two and one-third millions of miles. There is one method of measu ring the suns distance that the lecturer said he gave because it is pe- peculiarly 1nteresnng in this country on account of the transit of Venus on De- cember 6, 1882, which will be we'll seen in all parts of the United States. Venus, in passing across the suns disk, serves as sort of index, and astronomers sta tionea far apart on the earth make ob- SCI vations of it's apparent place at given times, and the reduction of these obser- vations gives 6 kind of triangulation from which the distance of the dial (that is the suns disk) may be calculated by simple mathematical rules. Another way of getting at the suns distance is by measuring the time that it takes light to travel from the sun to the earth.
 The lecturer proceeded to show that, while the whole solar system is the do- main of the sun, ruled by him, there are smaller domains within this great system which are ruled by the planets. The earth, for instance, has domain within which she rules supreme. The boundary of this domain is the place where the attractive power of the earth exactly balances that of the sun. This place is 150,000 miles from the earth so that the diameter of the earth's do- main is about 300, ,00O miles. From this results curious fact. It seems that the moon, which we have been accustomed to regard as 8 subject of the earth, is really an independent planet, since it lies entirely outside the limits of the earth's domain. So we cannot claim that the moon belongs to us, for she is clearly beyond the jurisdiction of our globe. This is not the case with the moons of any other of the planets. The domain of Jupiter is 29,000, ,000 miles in diameter, and his four moons all fall far within it. The domain of Saturn is also 29, 900, 900 miles in diameter, and as his eight moons all lie far within that distance, he keeps them we'll in hand. Sc all the planets that have moons gov ern them independent of the sun, ex- cept the earth, and her moon owes al- legiance not to the earth but to the sun himself. She is not the inferior but the peer of the earth.
 Prof. Proctor next spoke of the meteor systems. He said that he had recently been led to adopt the opinion that some of the meteo1ic stones that fall upon the earth had their origin in the earth itself, in the youthful volcanic period of her existence ages ago. Since then they have swung in orbits around the sun, and, as tho earth's orbit eros ses theirs, it happens that at times some of them are called by her attraction, and so they cease their wanderings, and fall to rest on the bosom of their mother. On the night of November 27, the lecturer said, we may expect to see 8 brilliant display of meteors radiatine from point near the star Gamma, II the right foot of the constellation Andromeda, which is now nearly over head at about ten o'clock tt night. It has been ascertained that meteors follow in hocks in the track of comets. In 1946 Biela's comet was observed tc split in two. The two parts each had 6 head and tail, and they rushed on side by side, now one appearing the brighter and now the other, until they dis appeared. At their return, in 1852 they were yet keeping up their swif race, but they had very much changed in form. In 1859 their perihelio1 passage was too near the sun to permit them to be observed. In 1865, whe1 they should have been seen again. they