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Updated: June 20, 2025
In Lalande's, as in Mästlin's time, the planet seemed to exist for no other purpose than to throw discredit on astronomers; and even to Leverrier's powerful analysis it long proved recalcitrant. On the 12th of September, 1869, however, he was able to announce before the Academy of Sciences the terms of a compromise between observation and calculation.
The brigadier invited him to a conference, guaranteeing him safe conduct, and intimating that if he refused the meeting, he would be regarded as the enemy of peace, and held responsible before God and man for all future bloodshed. Cavalier replied to Lalande's invitation, accepting the interview, indicating the place and the time of meeting.
Catinat was quite well aware of this offer of Lalande's, yet he appeared before the general perfectly cool and calm; only, either from a feeling of propriety or of pride, he was dressed in full uniform. The bold and haughty expression of the man who presented Cavalier's letter astonished the general, who asked him his name. "I am Catinat," he answered. "Catinat!" exclaimed Lalande in surprise.
At the same time, he was also working away at a line of study, seemingly useless to him, but in which he was afterwards to earn so great and deserved a reputation. Among the books he read during this Bath period were Smith's "Optics" and Lalande's "Astronomy."
In Lalande's Histoire Céleste, published in 1801, the places of no less than 47,390 stars were given, but in the rough, as it were, and consequently needing laborious processes of calculation to render them available for exact purposes.
I had not been mistaken, for soon I heard twenty-one guns greeting the entrance of my empty vehicle into Toulon, doubtless amid what the stereotyped official phrase would call, and with good reason this time, a scene of indescribable enthusiasm. Important events were occurring in the east in rapid succession at the time I joined Lalande's squadron.
The next comet whose return is expected is the one which should return in eighteen years; but it is not one of those which can hurt the earth. This note had not the slightest effect in restoring peace to the minds of unscientific Frenchmen. M. Lalande's study was crowded with anxious persons who came to inquire about his memoir.
Piazzi, meanwhile, had devoted nearly three years to the assiduous study of his new profession, acquiring a practical knowledge of Lalande's methods at the École Militaire, and of Maskelyne's at the Royal Observatory; and returned to Palermo in 1789, bringing with him, in the great five-foot circle which he had prevailed upon Ramsden to construct, the most perfect measuring instrument hitherto employed by an astronomer.
Thirteen observatories in Europe and America joined in the work, now virtually terminated. Thirty thousand additional stars thus taken in were allotted in zones to five observatories. Another important undertaking of the same class is the reobservation of the 47,300 stars in Lalande's Histoire Céleste.
He now eagerly studied Bode's Jahrbuch and Von Zach's Monatliche Correspondenz, overcoming each difficulty as it arose with the aid of Lalande's Traité d'Astronomie, and supplying, with amazing rapidity, his early deficiency in mathematical training. In two years he was able to attack a problem which would have tasked the patience, if not the skill, of the most experienced astronomer.
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