The mirror. (Stillwater, Minn.) 1894-1925, 1897-03-04

moon rose into sight. The rings of
Saturn made beautiful picture; the
satellites of Jupiter were seen, ever
changing, never ceasing, in their whirl
around their great parent With this
crude instrument did Calico thrust
back the barriers of the stellar world.
There are two general classes of tele-
scopes, the refracting and the reflect
ing. A few astronomers have attained
success with the rejecting telescope,
but the refractor has proved itself the
superior and it's possibilities are to all
appearances much greater for the flu
ture. The refracting telescope is COM
posed of two principal lenses, the OBJ
ject-glass and the eyeglass. The OBJ
ject-glass has general convexity of
form and its purpose is to collect light
from the object and bring it to focus
near the eyeglass where it forms
bright image. The eyeglass, in its turn,
on an enlarged scale. The larger
the object-glass the more light collected,
and on this glass depends largely the
magnifying power of the telescope.
There are, however, two difficulties,
that present themselves and to remedy
which are the best efforts of telescope
makers directed. First, single con-
vex lens will not accurately converge
all the rays of light to the same focus;
secondly, single lens, acting as
prism, disperses the rays, thus giving
series of overlapping images of differ
ent colors. The first is called spherical
and the second chromatic alteration.
To remedy this the object glass is made
of two lenses of different kinds of ma.
terial. One lens thus corrects the aber-
ration of the other, and through this
fact the large telescopes and modern
astronomy have become possible.
But the possibilities of the telescope
of the future is the main question of
this paper. What are these possibili-
ties-what, if any, the limit to it's size?
What will the telescope of the future
do, what may it yet reveal to the watch
full, eager eye of the astronomer? For
centuries men studied the heavens
without the aid of telescopes. and some
success was made. With it's invention,
and the substitution of two lenses in
place of one in the year 1853, "a tremen-
dous advance has been made. Within
the past few years the canals of Mars
have been discOvered; the sun to
change it's spots within the space of a
few hours; new moons have been dis
covered within the solar system; and
other moons travelling around moons
been discovered. The two wonderful
lights on Mars have been seen flashing
from place to place; the snow near it's
poles to melt away, and the changes on
it's surface in consequence carefully
noted.
Can we say what may not yet be seen
through telescope? May we, or our
posterity, not yet communicate with
beings in other worlds? Are all the
planets of the universe that are re
volving around their suns, set in their
places for the amusement of the
human race on this little sphere of
ours? think not; yet if the other
worlds are inhabited are they peopled
with beings similar to ourselves?
The great and rapid strides which
have lately been made in astrophysics,
principally in the line of photometry,
photography and spectroscopy, added
to the vast amount of work which
will always remain to be done in the
older lines of astronomy, open a field
for the most powerful means of re-
search. The monster telescope of to-
day may be called the light collectors
and space generators of the universe,
and their province, the solution of the
ultimate problems of science.
Subscribing for Metropolitan Papers.
The coming year will be crowded with big
nov nd hon iIc of ,iol,