Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1897-01-18
THE DISCOVERIES OF HERSCHEL.

tral bguT0 curing the Closing opOCH "
the eighteenth century is William
Herschel, the Hanoverian, whom
England has made hers by adoption.
He is a man with positive genius for
sidereal discovery. At first mere
amateur in astronomy, he snatches
time from his duties as music teacher
to grind him telescope mirror, and
begins gazing at the stars. Not con-
tent with his first telescope, he makes
another, and another, and he has such
genius for the work that he soon pos
sesses better instrument than was
ever made before. His patience IN
grinding the curved rejecting surface
is monumental. Sometimes for six
teen hours together he must walk
steadily about the mirror, polishing 1t
without once removing his hands.
Meantime his sister, always his chief
lieutenant, cheers him with her pres
ence. and from time to time puts food
into his mouth. The telescope com
pleted, the astronomer turns night
into day. and from sunset to- sunrise,
year in and year out, sweeps the
heavens, increasingly, unless prevent
ed by clouds Or the brightness of the
moon. His sister sits always at his
side, recording his observations.
He moves worlds, stars, universe
even, if you please, a galaxy of uni
verses; at least he proves that they
move, which seems scarcely less won
derful; and he expends the cosmos,
as man conceives it, to thousands of
times the dimensions it had before.
AS a mere beginning, he doubles the
diameter of the solar system by dis
covering the great outlying planet
which we now call Uranus, but which
ne christens Georgium Sidus. in honor
of his sovereign, and which his French
contemporaries, not relishing that
name, prefer to call Herschel.
This discovery is but a tride com
pared with what Herschel does later
on, but it gives him worldwide repu-
tation none the less. Comets and
to the solar system that has been
made within historic times, and it
creates a veritable Juror of popular
interest and enthusiasm.
He finds various hitherto unseen
moons of our sister planets; he makes
special studies of Saturn, and proves
that this planet, with it's rings, re-
wolves on it's axis; he scans the spots
on the sun, and suggests that they in
fuence the weather of our earth; in
short, he extends the entire field Of
solar astronomy. But very soon this
field becomes too small for him, and
his most important researches carry
him out into regions of space COM
pared with which the span of our So
lar system is mere point. With his
perfected telescopes he enters abys-
NAL vistas which no human mind had
had hitherto more than vaguely i'm
agined. He tells us that his 40 foot
reflector will bring him light from a
distance of cat least eleven and three
fourths millions of millions of millions
of miles, light which left its source
two million years ago. The smallest
stars visible to the unaided eye are
those of the sixth magnitude; this
telescope, he thinks, has power to re-
veal stars of the 1342nd magnitude.
But what does Herschel learn re-
garding these awful depths of space
and the stars that people them? This
is what the world wishes to know.
Copernicus, Calico, Kepler, have Civ
en- US solar system, but the stars
have been mystery. What says the
great refiector-are the stars points
of light, as the ancients taught, and
as more than one philosopher of the
century has still contend
ed or are they suns, as others hold?
Herschel answers, they are suns, each
and every one of all the millions
suns, many of them, larger than the
one that is the center of our tiny sys-
tenn. Not only so, but they are NOV
ing suns. Instead of being fixed in
space as has peen thought, they are
whirling in gigantic orbits about some
common center. Is our sun the CEN
ter? Far from it. Our sun is only a
star like the rest, circling on with its
attendant satellites-our giant sun a
star, no different from myriad other
stars, not even so large as some;
mere insignificant spark of matter IN
an infinite shower of sparks.
Nor is this all. Looking beyond the
sew thousand stars that are visible to
the naked eye, Herschel sees series
after series of more distant stars.