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He had already proved the regression of the nodes of a satellite moving in an orbit inclined to the ecliptic. He now said that the nodes of a ring of satellites revolving round the earth's equator would consequently all regress. And if joined into a solid ring its node would regress; and it would do so, only more slowly, if encumbered by the spherical part of the earth's mass.
Do we not observe that it is the law of nature do not brooks run into rivers rivers into seas mountains crumble down upon the plains? are not the seasons contented to equalise the parts of the earth? Why does the sun run round the ecliptic, instead of the equator, but to give an equal share of his heat to both sides of the world?
The orbit of Pallas, with its inclination of 34° 42', touches the limit of departure from the ecliptic level; the average obliquity of the asteroidal paths is somewhat less than that of the sun's equator; their mean eccentricity is below that of the curve traced out by Mercury, and all without exception are pursued in the planetary direction from west to east.
Fifteen or twenty years afterwards, Clarence King used to amuse him by mourning over the narrow escape that nature had made in attaining perfection. Except for two mistakes, the earth would have been a success. One of these errors was the inclination of the ecliptic; the other was the differentiation of the sexes, and the saddest thought about the last was that it should have been so modern.
Even in their super-fast ships, nearly three and a half weeks passed before the sun they sought, singled itself from the star-field as an extra bright point. Two days more, and the sun was within planetary distance. They came at an angle to the plane of the ecliptic, but they leveled down to it now, and slanted toward giant Jupiter and Jovian worlds.
It was not until 1656 that Huyghens, in his small pamphlet De Saturni Luna Observatio Nova, was able to suggest in a cypher the ring form; and in 1659, in his Systema Saturnium, he gave his reasons and translated the cypher: "The planet is surrounded by a slender flat ring, everywhere distinct from its surface, and inclined to the ecliptic."
It consists of 235 lunations, and in that time the pole of the moon's orbit revolves just once round the pole of the ecliptic, and for this reason the eclipses in one cycle are repeated with very slight modification in the next cycle, and so on for many centuries.
They probably aren't much, if any, outside the orbit of Mars, and they usually stay within a couple of million kilometers or so of the Ecliptic, so we'll start at the sun and shoot our beam in a spiral to cover that field. We ought to be able to hit them inside of twelve hours, but if we don't, we'll widen our spiral and keep on trying until we do hit them." "Heavens, Steve!
When crossing it, then, the great layer of meteorites was in the plane of the ecliptic; before crossing it the layer was greatly inclined to that plane one way, and after crossing it the layer was greatly inclined to that plane another way. So that we have in no way escaped the difficulty which the sea-bird theory was intended to remove.
The Zodiac. Through twelve of these Constellations, mostly contained within a belt of 16 degrees in width, and within which the planets appeared to revolve, the ancient astronomers inscribed a central line representing the Ecliptic, or apparent orbit of the sun, which they divided into 360 degrees; and quartering these to denote the seasons, they named the cardinal points the Summer and Winter Solstices, and the Vernal and Autumnal Equinoxes; the former referring to the longest and shortest days of the year; and the latter to the two periods when the days and nights are equal.
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