Morris tribune., 1882-09-14
Three Bright Planets,


Saturn and Jupiter are beginning to show
conspicuouSly in the morning sky. Saturn,
especially, is now a beautiful object ftr the
telescope, as it rises early, and by or .
o'clock a. M. is entirely clear of the m;s1s
| of the horizon. Its rings have opened SO
widely that in their narrowest diameter
| they are as broad as the ball of the planet,
and the division between the two principal
rings can be seen all the way round, except
where they passed behind the planet, even
with small telescopes. With sufficient tele-
scopic power, the marvellous gauze ring inside
the other two can be beautifully seen. 1t
does not require much magniiying power
to show the black band of shadow that the
globe of Saturn casts upon the rings on the
side away from the sun. The delicate
shades OF color that variegate both the
planet and the rings, the markings which
give stercoscopic effect, making this
wonderful, ringed world appear to be
| actually suspended before the eyes like q
golden ball of the most exquisite workman
ship hung within splendid double ring of
the same metal, and the swarm of little
moons circling about the whole and perpet-
ually changing their places, furnish exhaust
less delight to the possessor of a good tele-
scope, Jupiter with his cloud belts, his
revolving satellites lodging in and out of
the gigantic shadow of the great orb and
throwing black dots of shade upon his disk
as they pass around the sunward side of the
planet, is as interesting as Saturn, but he rises
some two hours later, and will be seen later
in September and October. Taurus a. d
Orion and other consultations that make
the winter evenings brilliant may row be
seen in the morning sky. They furnish
hl,, rnIS irotn ,b;n Tn, b. a.
scope in the shape Of nebulae, star clusters,
and double stars. The most wonde full of
all is the great nebula in the sword of Orion.
A mere spy-glass will show it as a patch of
luminous cloud with stars scattered through
it. In good telescope It's appearance is
indeScribable. Lord Rosse thought he could
resolve it into excessively y minute stars with
his gigantic telescope at ParsonstOwn, but
the Spectroscope showed that he was mis-
taken, and that this strange object is a mass
OF matter in gaseous condition and extend
ing yer millions of miles. In one place
four stars shine close together in the lumin-
Gus mass, and there are other stars scattered
through IL. 1t is not an unreasonable
question to ask whether we do not here
behold, in the very act, the formation of
new system of suns and worlds out Of chaos
Venus is becoming very brilliant in the even
ing sky, throwing her fiery neighbor, Mars,
Sobil1StCiy 1ilIO Ile Slid!e. LII tue Iele-
scope she now resembles the moon when it
is little past halffuli. Through the autumn
she will continue to grow more and more
brilliant, until she appears as thin crescent,
a silver bow. Then she will disappear as
star, to reappear On the 9Th of December as
a black dot on the sun. At that time she
will have to face such a bristling array of
telescope as was probably never before turned
upon any celestial body. Almost every
civilized government has fitted out expedi-
tions of astronomers to observe the transit
from various parts of the world, and in
western and central Europe, North and
South America, and Australia Thousands of
telescopes will be trained upon the sun from
public and private observatories, roofs back
yards. lawns, city parks, and street corners.
Everybody will want to have at least one
good look at Venus upon the suns disk,
for all the world will be talking about it,
and neither we of this generation nor our
children, and but few even of our grand
children will behold another transit of
Venus, for the next occurs in the year 2004.
After it is over the astronomers will set
themselves to figuring, their calculations
will extend through months and even
years, and at the last they will probably
announce that they have not yet obtained
exact knowledge of distance of the sun they
are within about 1OO,O 900 miles of the truth,
and that at the next transit of Venus they
hope the astronomers of the twenty-first
century will be able to reduce the limits of
error to 500,0 900 miles or less. There are,
however, other methods of measuring the
suns distance, which it is hoped will long
before that time give more satisfactory
results.