The Romance of Modern Astronomy: Describing in Simple But Exact Language the Wonders of the Heavens |
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Common terms and phrases
Alpha appear Arcturus asteroids astro atmosphere axis believed bodies bright brightest star brilliant calculated canals celestial CHAPTER clouds comet constellation Copernican Copernicus dark detected diameter disc discovered discovery distance double stars enormous existence fact famous Galaxy Galileo German astronomer globe gravitation Halley heat heavens hemisphere Herschel hundred Huyghens inhabitants instrument interest Jupiter Kepler known light magnificent magnitude Mars Max Wolf measured Mercury meteors millions of miles Moon Moon's motion moving nearest nebula Neptune Newton night object observations Observatory orb of day orbit Orion Paris Observatory period photograph planetary position Professor Lowell reflecting telescope remarkable revolution rotation round the Earth round the Sun satellites Saturn Schiaparelli seen showed Sir Robert Ball Sirius solar system space spectacle spectroscope spots Sun's surface tail telescope theory tides total eclipse Tycho Brahe unaided eye Universe Uranus variable stars velocity Venus visible William Huggins
Popular passages
Page 230 - And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years...
Page 24 - Newton generalized the law of attraction into a statement that every particle of matter in the universe attracts every other particle with a force which varies directly as the product of their masses and inversely as the square of the distance between them; and he thence deduced the law of attraction for spherical shells of constant density.
Page 126 - Formed a design in the beginning of this week, of investigating, as soon as possible after taking my degree, the irregularities in the motion of Uranus, which are yet unaccounted for; in order to find whether they may be attributed to the action of an undiscovered planet beyond it; and if possible thence to determine the elements of its orbit, etc. approximately, which would probably lead to its discovery.
Page 117 - I do not know what to say in a case so surprising, so unlocked for, and so novel. The shortness of the time, the unexpected nature of the event, the weakness of my understanding, and the fear of being mistaken, have greatly confounded me.
Page 174 - the dark lines of the spectrum and the spectrum itself gradually faded away until, all at once, as suddenly as a bursting rocket shoots out its stars, the whole field of view was filled with bright lines, more numerous than one can count.
Page 306 - ... length, between my eye and the stars ; sliding the beads upon it till they hid such and such stars from my eye, in order to take their apparent distances from one another; and then, laying the thread down on a paper, I marked the stars thereon by the beads, according to their respective positions, having a candle by me.
Page 217 - To God's eternal house direct the way; A broad and ample road, whose dust is gold And pavement stars, as stars to thee appear, Seen in the galaxy, that milky way, Which nightly, as a circling zone, thou seest Powder'd with stars.
Page 317 - Cosmos of the ancient world was but as a cabinet of brilliants, or rather a little jewelled cup found in the ocean or the wilderness. Wonderful as were the achievements, and sagacious as were the guesses, of the Greek astronomers, they little suspected what they were registering when they drew up their catalogues of stars : skilfully as they often read the relative motions and positions of the wandering lights of heaven, so as to compute and predict the eclipse, their...
Page 146 - ... natural limitations of single observers, and even of the largest observatories, led long ago to co-operative effort. In the words of the late Sir David Gill, then Astronomer Royal at the Cape of Good Hope, the great comet of 1882 showed "an astonishing brilliancy as it rose behind the mountains on the east of Table Bay, and seemed in no way diminished in brightness when the sun rose a few minutes afterwards.
Page 315 - Among opticians and astronomers nothing now is talked of but what they call my great discoveries. Alas ! this shows how far they are behind, when such trifles as I have seen and done are called great. Let me but get at it again ! I will make such telescopes, and see such things — that is, I will endeavor to do so.