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The first mention of the great Orion nebula is by a Swiss Jesuit named Cysatus, who succeeded Father Scheiner in the chair of mathematics at Ingolstadt. He used it, apparently without any suspicion of its novelty, as a term of comparison for the comet of December 1618.

CYSATUS. A regular walled-plain, apparently about 28 miles in diameter, forming the most northerly member of a chain of formations, of which Newton, Short, and Moretus, extending towards the S. limb, form a part. Its border rises nearly 13,000 feet above a floor devoid of prominent detail.

GRUEMBERGER. A much larger and more irregular ring-plain, nearly 40 miles from wall to wall, on the E. side of Cysatus. Its W. border rises nearly 14,000 feet above the interior, which includes an abnormally deep crater, the bottom of which is 20,000 feet below the crest of the W. wall, and several small depressions and ridges. The inner E. slope is finely terraced.

Observation of a granular structure in cometary nuclei dates far back into the seventeenth century, when Cysatus and Hevelius described the central parts of the comets of 1618 and 1652 respectively as made up of a congeries of minute stars.

The mountains equal to Mont Blanc are Moret, Theophylus, and Catharnia; to Mount Rosa, Piccolomini, Werner, and Harpalus; to Mount Cervin, Macrobus, Eratosthenes, Albateque, and Delambre; to the Peak of Teneriffe, Bacon, Cysatus, Philolaus, and the Alps; to Mount Perdu, in the Pyrenees, Roemer and Boguslawski; to Etna, Hercules, Atlas, and Furnerius.