The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1900-01-07
Planets and Stars
How Sky-Scanners Get
to Tell Them Apart.


out the planets? How may one distin-
guish a planet from star? Harold ia
coby, an authority. says:
| We do not know what man first discov-
cred planets in the sky. It may have been
some shepherd tending his Aocks. perhaps
upon the plains of Chaldea, surely in
far-away, misty early beginnings of man
kind upon the earth. And yet to this day
the test by which the unaided eye can
most easily distinguish a planet from
star remains the same as that which
must have revealed the first planet TO the
earliest of astronomical observers. The
very name planet tells the history of an
epoch-making discovery just as surely as
though a written record of its making
had been handed down TO US through sue
/ cessive generations of men. PLANET
signifies "wanderer." 1t comes from an
ancient Greek word of that meaning.
And in truth, TO an unlearned, unlettered
shepherd of today the planets must APP
pear just as they did TO his long-past
forerunner of Chaldea, aimless, lawiess
wandering stars within the serried array
Of heavens night.
1t is ever the characteristic Of genius TO
disentangIe the simple basic phenomena
Of nature from among-t the complex results
exhibited the eye of casual observer.
So we shall not err in ascribng genius TO
the man who first noted the planets pc
cuIiarity of travelling among other stars,
and in designating his discovery. an epoch
making one The whole sky is thickly
studded with the so-called fixed stars. So
nh
| they all retain precisely the same relative
positions with respect to one another
from year to year and from generation to
genera ton If you select certain tri-
angle or quadrangle of stars as they rise
in the east. you will see them slowly
climb the sky and again descend and set
in the west, always forming precisely
the same geometrical figure. Nor is this
all. If the ancient records of naked-eye
| observations were search I'd, with care,
lust :Ae same triangle or quadrangle or
stars would be found described as hav-
ing always been seen to rise and set,
then as now, so long as men have watch
ed the sky.
But suppose there were a planet within
the centre of our triangle Of stars. As
we watched night after night, we should
see the planet slowly change its place
within the triangle. By imperceptble de-
grees, but with continuous and cumu-
lative motion, the planet would approach
one of the triangles sides, and at length
would pass far beyond and away. 1t is
thus that the first planet must have been
differentiated from the stars, and thus
again the naked-eye astronomer of today
-. -, t,Yr~ Ion ta ~
study. Note carefully the heavenly boz
dies you suspect of being planets. Fix in
your mind, or on a diagram, their posi-
tions with respect to neighboring stars,
and you win speedily come into possess
sion of evidence as to the planetary ma
ture Of the body under observation. One
planet detected in this way will afford
more satisfaction and encouraging in
struction to the beginner in astronomy
than much study by the aid of books
and teachers.
1t is true that other characteristics Of
the planets will help in their Identified
ton by the unaided eye. In the first
place, the planets are usually very bright
though not often surprising the most lu-
cid of the fixed stars. Again the planets
are said not to twinkle. Many observ-
ers would not consider this strictly ac-
curate. though it is certainly a fact that
the twinkling Of the planets is less than
that of majority of the stars. But, in
the absence of a telescope, the only sure
test is the presence of such motion
among the stars as we have described.
Into the causes of this motion it is not
our intention to enter. Suffice it to say
that it is due to the planets revolution
in their annual orbits about the SUM- This
makes them change their positions in
space, and so we see them projected on
different parts Of the distant vault of the
sky at different dates of observation.
We have just received from Germany a
pamphlet issued by the observatory at
Potsdam, near Berlin, describing cere-
| monies connected with the official install
lation of a new and large telescope. 1t
appars that the Kaiser himself has be-
come sufficiently interested in astronomy
to have ordered the immediate construc-
ton of such an instrument, after it had
been repeatedly asked by the astronomers
and refused by successive imperial min
listers from motives of economy. The
| Kaiser even attended personally the ded-
| ication ceremonies al Pctsdam. and
seems 10 have listened to the speeches
| made upon that occasion. These were. al
is only right and proper. somewhat com
plimentary to the observatory and the
| noble patron who honored it by his pres
! ence Perhaps they might even be said
| to SAVIOR somewhat of praise-majeste, but
! this does not appear to be a crime in
| Germany.
But setting aside the rather humorous
aspect which these offcial foreign cere-
| monial occasions generally exhibit TO an
| American, We cannot too seriously en-
| phasize the importance to Astronomical
progress of this genuine interest on the
| Emperors part Germany deservedly
stands very high among the nations as
q cultivator of astronomy. But there is
one class of researches that il has been
| quite impossible to undertake there.
| These require observations with a tele-
! scope of great Sizo and power; and such
a telescope Germany has never had Our
/ own country has always led in this re-
spect It was in the Clark workshop al
/ Cambridgepoyt, Mass. that the first
modern great telescope was made, and
/ ever since the successive largest tele-
! scopes have been supplied with lenses
/ from that same, workshop. The United
( States Naval Observatory, the Lick OBJ
! seryatory in California. and the new
/ Yerkss observatory near Chicago, have
/ each in turn possessed the worlds great
/ est telescope. and foreign ast-on 7mers
/ have always been compelled 10 content
, themselves with lesser insrr1!r,u-S R71f