The times., 1898-10-16
THE STAR PHOTOGRAPHS
Something of the Men and Methods
Science, Especially by Making
photographs of the Heavens-A
Young Woman's Splendid Gift.

rent records of no end of fieeting phe- |
nomena for subsequent study. The mat
ter is one of especial interest In Ameri- |
ca. because Americans have had SO !
large a share In the work. At the re- |
cent meeting OF scientists in Boston,
Prof. L. e. Barnard, of the Yerkes OBJ |
servatory, than whom no more capable |
and unprecedented historian can be found, |
reviewed what has been accomplished in |
this department of activity during the |
last sixty years.
Daguerre' announced his wonderful and |
revolutionary discovery late in 1899 With |
in year DR.. John w. Draper, OF New
York City, had applied the process 20
the moon. Prof. Bond. of the
Observatory. followed the mat
ter up, as did various foreign astrono-
mers. but the first real success was that
of DR.. Draper. Then that gentleman's
son. DR.. Henry Draper, continued the
work, greatly improving on the original.
He MADE his own telescope TO begin
with. feat that has been paralleled
since that time. but not often. From
1860 to 1865 the best lunar photographs
were those taken by the younger Dra-
per
Then another resident of New York
city, Lewis NJ. Rutherfurd. manufact-
ured a telescope. and began to photo
graph the moon and sun. Drapers tele-
scope was a reflector of Is 1-2 inches d.
ameter. Rutherfurd's was a refractor.
II inches across. Rutherfurd, by the
way, was the first man to get photo
graphs OF the sun that showed the spots
and the. peculiar granulated surface of
the orb of day. Others have since made
better pictures of the sort, but the New
Yorker was a pioneer. and this fact
counts for much.
Between 1860 and 1870 the sun had been
photographed during an eclipse several
times, but little of the corona was Sc
cured. The only feature of the sun that
appeared at all distinctly was the .promi-
nences. The first good pictures of the
corona were taken during the eclipse
of 1870. Since that time Prof. Todd. of
Amherst. has been member, or in
charge. of an expedition to observe near
Iy every solar eclipse. no matter In what
part OF the world It occurred.
third class of subjects selected by
DR.. Henry Draper for dellneation was
the nebulae. His photograph of the ORR
on nebula, obtained in 1880, was the first
of its kind Common, in England, and
Prof II. C. Wilson, of Mortified. Mimi.
afterward took more exquisite pictures of
the same object; the Henry brothers, of
Paris, got a wonderful one of the streaks
Of nebulous matter in the Pleiades. and
Roberts made surprising discovery of
the structure of the Andromeda nebula
by photography, but none of these later
performances were so revolutionary as
Draper's.
The first photographs of comets were
made in the same year QSSD by Draper
and a ErenChman Janssen
Bond, of harvard. photographed stars
ahead of any one else, but Rutherfurd
got the earliest star clusters, such the
Pleiades and the Praesepe group. These,
like the other famous pictures obtained
by the latter astronomer. now belong to
the collections OF Columbia University.
The first telescope made and used ex-
pressly for photographing stars was that
of the Henry Brothers. of Paris. They
were engaged in hunting for asteroids
the numerous tiny planets that have or
bits between those of Mars and Jupiter.
And that they might more readily dis
| tinguish these objects, which belong to
| our solar system, from the stars in the
| far-distant background. the Henry Broth
| ers set out to make elaborate charts of
| the region along which the asteroids
| were to be found-the ecliptic. But they
| finally struck snag and came to a
! SldHuStlli just AT lllS JuHctuTe some
| fine photographs were made by DR.. GILL
at the Cape of Good Hope. of a brilliant
| comet, that of 1882 When these pictures
were examined by astronomers in the
| northern hemisphere il was noticed that
| an astonishing abundance of stars was
| shown therein with great distinctness
| The Paris asteroid hunters here found
a solution to their problem. With this
new and easy way to make a chart OF
! the stars, no matter how thickly strewr
| they were, the Henry Brothers decided
to produce an instrument for that pur-
| pose.
Prof. Barnard at this point in his sto-
ry. gives a beautiful illustration of the
brotheTly devotion of the two men just
mentioned. Between them they discover.
| ed fourteen asteroids within a certain
period and in the published records these
| are alternately ascribed to Paul anG
! Prosper Henry. The lecturer adds: .'I;
is likely that We shall never know which
brother discovered any one of these
planets"
Prof. Barnard makes only the mos
( modest reference to his own achieve,
ments in celestial photography While
other men have got excellent pictures o
nebuae outside of the Milky Way, nc
one could take a satisfactory photo
graph of that region. owing to the extra
ordinary profusion of the stars there ant
the tendency of the images to spread ant
run into one another. If the plate wer,
exposed for long time. Prof Barnard
was photographer before he was al
astronomer, and his experience enabled
him to devise a way to obviate the lat
ter difficulty, and take photograph tina
would show the stars distinct from NJ
another even with an exposure of sew
eral hours--long enough to get the faint
est details OF the nebula. The impor
tance of this feat will be better realize,
when one remembers that many astron
omers believe that 1t is in the MIX,
Way that the clew Is to be found to tn
relation between stars and nebulae Il
the history of creation.
No distinctly new method in astronom
ical photography has ever surpassed il
interest that which originated with PROT
George e. Hale, formerly of Chicago
and now in charge Of the Yerkes obser
vatory. BY combining the spectroscop
with the Photographic telescope he
able to take n picture by the light of
single bright line in the spectrum. an
thus to delineate a prominence or focul
on the sun containing the particular ele
ment-hydrogen or calcium-for whic
that bright line stands. Prof. Hale wo
worldwide fame within a few month
by that stroke of genius.
class of work in which photograph
has proved of rare value is astronomics
spectroscopy. There are hundreds not (
say, thousands, of lines that cannot
seen at all out beyond the violet end {
the visible spectrum. These have the
story to tell as to the composition an
motion of the bodies from which the
emanate, but their very existence was ur
| known until thew nNntnP-l Dhp,