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A nautical map is prefixed to some copies of the tables, and the description of it contains the first notice of the method of determining the longitude by means of occultations.
While this work was going through the press, we were favoured with the longitudes of several stations determined from observed occultations of stars by the moon, and from eclipses and reappearances of Jupiter's satellites, by Mr. Mann, the able Assistant to the Cape Astronomer Royal; the lunars are still in the hands of Mr. G. W. H. Maclear of the same Observatory.
What of the Major and Minor Occultations? What of the cities of Jabúlqá and Jabúlsá? How are we to explain the sayings of Ḥusayn-ibn-Rúh, and what interpretation should be given to the authenticated traditions ascribed to Ibn-i-Mihríyár? Where are the Men of the Unseen, who are to traverse, in a week, the whole surface of the earth?
Babbage was among the first to suggest that a lighthouse might be made to signal a distinctive number by occultations of its light; but Sir William pointed out the merits of the Morse telegraphic code for the purpose, and urged that the signals should consist of short and long flashes of the light to represent the dots and dashes.
After the crushing of the ship on October 27, 1915, no further occultations were observed, but the calculated rates for the watches were employed, and the longitude deduced, using these rates on March 23, 1916, was only about 10´ of arc in error, judging by the observations of Joinville Land made on that day.
The most interesting phenomena that they present are their transits and those of their round, black shadows across the face of the planet; their eclipses by the planet's shadow, when they disappear and afterward reappear with astonishing suddenness; and their occultations by the globe of Jupiter.
Is science chiefly to value each new discovery as a victory gained over its rival? Is the spiritual world to revolve eternally upon an axis of which the two poles are materialism and superstition, to be buried in their alternate occultations in periods of utter darkness, or lifted into an icy light where there is neither life nor warmth?
In July, August, and September further occultations were observed, and a fairly reliable rate was worked out for the chronometers and watches.
On November 22nd, 1820, he notes in his journal that he had begun Newton's "Principia": he commenced also the study of astronomy by observing eclipses, occultations, and similar phenomena. When he was sixteen we learn that he had read conic sections, and that he was engaged in the study of pendulums.
The astronomical part of our ephemeris, therefore, gives the positions of the principal fixed stars, the sun, moon, and all the larger planets at the moment of transit over our own meridian. The third class of data in the ephemeris comprises phenomena to be predicted and observed. Such are eclipses of the sun and moon, occultations of fixed stars by the moon, and eclipses of Jupiter's satellites.
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