The Story of the Heavens |
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Common terms and phrases
61 Cygni actually appearance astronomers atmosphere attraction axis beautiful bodies bright brilliant calculations celestial centre chapter circle comet compared constellation course crater diameter discovery distance doubt earth ellipse enormous equal fact globe gradually heat heavens Herschel instrument interest Jupiter Kepler known labours law of gravitation laws of Kepler length less light lunar magnitude Mars mass measure Mercury meteorites meteors mighty miles a second minor planets minute moon motion move movements nearly nebula Neptune night object observations observatory once orbit parallax pass path period phenomena planetary Pole Star position present proper motion question rays remarkable revolution revolve ring rotation round satellites Saturn seems seen shooting stars shower shown Sirius solar system spot stupendous sun's suppose surface tail telescope theory tides tion transit of Venus unaided eye Uranus vast velocity visible volcanoes weight William Herschel
Popular passages
Page 80 - This truth within thy mind rehearse, That in a boundless universe Is boundless better, boundless worse. 'Think you this mould of hopes and fears Could find no statelier than his peers In yonder hundred million spheres?' It spake, moreover, in my mind: 'Tho' thou wert scatter'd to the wind, Yet is there plenty of the kind.
Page 302 - Wherefore if according to what we have already said it should return again about the year 1758, candid posterity will not refuse to acknowledge that this was first discovered by an Englishman.
Page 412 - I congratulate you and myself that we have lived to see the great and hitherto impassable barrier to our excursions into the sidereal universe — that barrier against which we have chafed so long and so vainly — almost simultaneously overleaped at three different points. It is the greatest and most glorious triumph which practical astronomy has ever witnessed.
Page 287 - It has done more. It has given us the probable prospect of the discovery of another. We see it as Columbus saw America from the shores of Spain. Its movements have been felt, trembling along the far-reaching line of our analysis, with a certainty hardly inferior to that of ocular demonstration.
Page 338 - There, for the next two or three hours, we witnessed a spectacle which can never fade from my memory. The shooting stars gradually increased in number until sometimes several were seen at once.
Page 237 - I have shown them ? Now, perhaps, is the time come to revive the well-nigh withered hopes of those who, guided by more profound contemplations, have discovered the fallacy of the new observations, and demonstrated the utter impossibility of their existence. 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 495 - ... the sun ; so that, if we neglect the loss of heat by transmission through the glass, the temperature at the focus should be the same as that of a point placed at such a distance from the sun that the solar disc would seem just as large as the lens itself, viewed from its own focus.
Page 80 - Men can dwell on the earth, and oak-trees can thrive therein, because the constitutions of the man and of the oak are specially adapted to the particular circumstances of the earth. Could we obtain a closer view of some of the celestial bodies, we should probably find that they, too, teem with life, but with life specially adapted to the environment— life in forms strange and weird; life far stranger to us than Columbus found it to be in the New World when he first landed there. Life, it may be,...
Page 36 - ... connection with these objects : patches of intense brightness suddenly break out, remaining visible for a few minutes, moving, while they last, with velocities as great as one hundred miles a second. One of these events has become classical. It occurred on the forenoon (Greenwich time) of September 1, 1859, and was independently witnessed by two well.known and reliable observers, Mr.
Page 37 - ... 1859. Mr. Carrington at the time was making his usual daily observation upon the position, configuration, and size of the spots by means of an image of the solar disk upon a screen, being then engaged upon that eight years' series of observations which lies at the foundation of so much of our present solar science. Mr. Hodgson, at a distance of many miles, was at the same time sketching details of sun-spot structure by means of a solar eyepiece and shade-glass. They simultaneously saw two luminous...