The Forrest City times., 1891-07-24
SCIENCE AND PROGRESS
MATTERS OF INTEREST TO THE
 SCIENTIFIC WORLD.
Photographic Chart ofthe Heavens --Boiler Injector--T The Autcmat- ic Library--lt Picks up Paper
 Sheets--Inventedf for
 Craveyards.
4 Photographic Chart of tho
 Heavens

ful of all human achievements are those of astronomic science. No other facts so profoundly impress the mind of the learned as well as the un- learned as those which have been as- certained by astronomic investigation. That the inhabitants of our planet mere atom in the immeasurable universe of matter-have reached millions upon millions of miles into space, weighed and measured other planets and systems and accurately defined their orbits is the highest tri- bute that can be paid to the intellect of man. In all astronomic progress since time began the inventor and scientist have worked together Scarcely a step was possible without the aid of invention. In fact there is no other department of human study in which science and invention are so separably blended, in which the scien- tist IS so much the inventor and the inventor so much the scientist. as in astronomy. The leading observatories in Europe and America
 
 graphic chart of the heavens. Prepar- ations for this gigantic work are now going on and satisfactory results are reported. Specimen plates from nu- merous observat ories were recently ex- aElined in Paris as an assistance in the arrangement of final details of the undertaking. A gratifying approach to uniformity was observed in the pre- liminary and experimental efforts. 1t is stated, however, that at a late meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society in London Mr. Isaac Roberts, whose wonderful photographs of the Andromeda nebula and other celestial phenomena have within the past two or three years given him a worldwide fame, rather startled some of the as- tronomers by his report of experi- ments that he had been trying. It ap- pears that Mir. Roberts found sur prising difference in the number of stars that he was able to photograph on different nights, On one night he got eighty stars on a plate represent ing a particular spot in the sky, on another night two hundred, and on another night four hundred stars. all within the same small expanse of the heavens. He got the photographs of more stars when a bright moon was shining than in a clear dark night when to the eye the heavens appear richer with stars. Should similar difference affect photographs taken for the proposed chart, the value of the picture would be materially inn paired Mir Roberts himself remark ed that his apparatus was different in many respects from that which would be employed in the charting, and some of the members of the Royal Astronomical Society who listened to his statements appeared not to attach great importance to the source of error which he had pointed out, Tbe New York Sun, in an excellent editorial treatise on this subject, concludes that with all its imperiections, this great photograph of he universe will be one of the most wonderfully interesting achievements of human genius. It may be said with out exaggeration that future ages will refer back to 1t as one of the great strategetic points won by science. A photograph representation of the heavens as they appear at the close Of the nineteenth century may in the twenty fifth or the fortieth eentury prove to be the means of solving some of the great problems relating to the constitution of the universe: The im- portance Of the proposed chart stands out clearly the moment attention is drawn to the fact that the so-called fixed stars are actually flying in every conceivable direction--toward4 us, away from us, to the right, to tteleft, northward and southward, from east to west. and from west to east. There IS no discernable centre of thelr mos ton, and they appear to stand still to ordinary observation simply because their distance Is so immense and tse span of human life Is so brief that a single observer attempting to perceive their change of place gets some such sense of motion as comes from mo- mentary glance at an express train crawling along river bank miles away. y."-lnventive Age.