Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1886-08-06
WONDERS OF THE HEAVENS.
How They May be Unfolded by the
Greater Telescopes.


omers were, of course, effected without
the aid of glasses, and Pliny, in his ninth
book of the Almagest, quotes fourteen
observations of Mercury, dating 200 or
300 years before our era, and still to be
relied on. They had no doubt, good
eyes in those days, when everybody ex-
cept the astrologers went to bed with
the sun, and rose as soon as he appeared.
In the tail of Ursa Major the middle star
has near it small companion styled on
the celestial chart Alcor. The Arab OBJ
servers knew this by the name of Saidak
which means touchstone or trial; for if a
man coul perceive that tiny point with
the unassisted eye he could easily see
the small stars of the Pleiades and the
satellites of Jupiter.
We must, however also remember the
purity and transparency of the eastern
sky, especially in dry, desert regions,
where all the heavenly orbs shine with
brilliancy quite unknown to western as
tronomers. Copernicus, it is related,
lamented in the hour of his death that
he had never so much as seen the planet
Mercury, which the happier Greek OBJ
servers called Stilbon, the splendid shin
ing: and one of the most promising
points in connection with this great new
telescope in America is that it will be
perched upon a mountain peak, far
above the dusts and msts of the lower
world-lifted into the stainlessly
dark blue atmosphere which Pro-
fessor Tyndall has celebrated upon his
high Alps. Accordingly, when we call
to mind the considerable additions made
to the heavenly science by such com
paratively inferior instruments as those
of Lord Rose, Mr.. Lasell and the elder
Herschel, we may be full of hope that
the California astronomers will astonish
and delight the Old World with new dis
coveries, when some new planet swims
into their ken They can hardly be in
time for the two comets of the season.
the Fabrey and the Bernard, which are
to be in their highest brilliancy about
May ID next, and not much farther from
the earth than the trifle of $4,000, 900 and
30, 1000, 900 of miles respectively.
There are, however, unresolved nebu-
l9 at which the great glass will no
sooner be pointed than we may expect
to have those distant mysteries instantly
come down-like Col. Sticks coon-into
galaXies of stars and systems: and out
side Uranus and Neptune. the latter
being distant from us ,, 746. 000 600 miles
the new telescope may cast glance in
the border world between our farthest
planet and our nearest Ctar, and perhaps
lind a sister for the SINGLE moon of Nep-
tune, and tell us why the four moons of
Uranus-Ariel, Umpriel Titania and
Uberon-dance backward in the eternal
minuet of the skies and have planes per-
pendicular to the elliptic of the mother
body.
There are indeed endless points upon
which astronomers seek such informal
ton as improved command of the heav-
ems might supply, especially if the en-
HANGED power of the telescope can be
welded to the faithful eyesight of the
Photographic camera. Wonderful things
have been achieved Of late in such
way; spaces of the midnight sky blank
to the ordinary lens or mirror, have re-
vealed to the sensitive film of the plate
myriads of starry bodies. The crimson
cressets on the suns ridge have depicted
themselves his spots have registered
their periodic passage, and the time APP
proaches, apparently, when an automatic
astronomer will be invented which will
chronicle event of the spheres with sleep
less accuracy. We want to know much
more of comets, of nebule, and of those
curious little members of our system,
the planetoids, which perpetually in
crease in numbers with closer observa-
ton, until they have grown up during
the present century 10 more than $50
known and named bodies. They wander
as obedient to law as the very largest
planet, between Mars and Jupiter, tiny
islets of the sapphire ocean, small chill
dren of the cosmos, the biggest not much
more than 300 miles in diameter, few of
them so bulky as to be visible without
a telescope
Are these little silver bees of the sys-
TEN mere broken fragments of some In
termediate planet, or have they been
seriously created, and have they been
taken up with revolution and gravita-
ton, and all the rest of it, on their own
account and for special purposes. To
answer that and many another question
of the kind may doubtless, in an Amer-
can phrase, lick the Lick glass;" but
more and more as astronomical concep-
tons expand, are they silently affecting
morals, thoughts and religion. We see
infinity and grasp eternity when we look
forth into the starry space. The visible
universe is palpably boundless, and i'm
plies an invisible universe of which it is
the shadow, the symbol and the imper-
feet provisional expression. All faiths
heretofore delived TO mankind have been
prescientific, built on the theory-or ac-
cepting it-that the stars were set in
heaven the light this little o, the earth, y
round which the sun goes daily. Faith
has not yet ventured TO look through
Galileo's "optik glass" let alone the
gigantic lenses of James Lick. BY and
by mankind will understand, as well as
hear of, larger ideas. 1t will be better
understood why the Divine Teacher OF
Galilae said. sIn nv Father's housa arg