The Richmond palladium. (Richmond, Ind.) 1906-1907, 1906-07-30
Tradition That They May He Seen
From Bottom of shaft.


Are the stars visible TO ordinary
sight in the daytime? There is a wide
spread tradition that they are; that II
an observer places himself at the bot
tom of any deep shaft-as Of a mine,
we'll or a factory chimney-whic may
shut off scattered light and reduce the
area OF sky illumination acting on the
retina, he will be able to discern the
brighter stars without difficulty. The
tradition is one of Il respectable an.
uquity, for Aristotle refers TO persons
seeing stars in daylight when looking
out from caverns of subterraneau
reservoirs. and pliny ascribes to deep
wells similar power of rendering
visible the stars. the light of which
would otherwise be lost In the over.
towering splendor OF the solar rays.
The tradition. well founded or not,
has often been adopted for literary
effect. 1t seems almost sacrilegious to
hint that no star known to astronomers
could have shone down INCREASINGLY up-
on poor Stephen Blackpool during his
seven days and nights of agony at the
L, IL
the best he could only have caught a
glimpse of it for few minutes In each
twenty four hours as IL passed across
the zenith. Dickens indeed, does not
absolutely say that Stephen watched
the star by daylight. 1t is only
natural inference from his description,
but Kipling adopts the tradition in its
EXTREMIST form when he writes of
The gorge that shows the stars at noon
day clear.
But Is the tradition true? OF course
every one knows that Venus from time
to time may be seen even at high noon,
but then Venus at her brightest is
many times over brighter than Sirius.
Then, again, the assistance of tele-
scope enables the brighter stars to be
discerned at midday, but the telescope
not only directs the eye and greatly
limits the area from which the sky
light reaches the observer, but 1t enor-
mously increases the brightness Of the
star relative to that sky illumination
The naked eye observation of true stars
in full sunlight stands in quite a differ
ent category.
Humboldt, who was much interest
ed in the question, repeatedly tried the
experiment, both in Siberia and in
America, and not only failed himself
ever to detect star, but never came
across any one who had succeeded.
Much more recently an American as
tronomer set up n tube for the ex-
press purpose of seeing the Pleiades
by daylight, also with no effect 1t
has been supposed that FIamsteed. the
first astronomer royal, sank well at
Greenwich observatory for the purpose
OF observing Gamma Draconis, the
zenith star of Greenwich, In this man.
ner.
The existence of the well is undoubt-
ed, though Sir George Airy. the late
astronomer royal, was unable to find
1t, but Flamsteed marks it on more
than one of his plans of the observa-
tory, and there Is a drawing extant
Of the well itself showing the spiral
staircase that ran down Ii. But its
purpose seems to have been not to
have furnished the means of observ-
ing the star with the naked eve, but
to enable the observer TO measure, as
accurately as possible, the distance of
the star from the true zenith at the
moment of transit.
Sir John Herschel mentions a case,
which he considers as satisfactory evi-
dence, of an optician who stated that
the earliest circumstance that drew his
attention to astronomy twas the reg
ular appearance at a certain hour for
several successive days of a consid-
cradle star through the shaft of a
chimney" This, it will be noticed, is
second hand evidence. / have never
been able to obtain evidence even so
direct as this myself, though l have
met several persons who felt quite con-
fident that they had seen stars by day.
light on looking up the shaft of
mine, or that "some one had told them
he had done so.''-knowledge.