Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 24, 2025
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.
Baily had carried through with such success: "If we ask to what end magnificent establishments are maintained by states and sovereigns, furnished with masterpieces of art, and placed under the direction of men of first-rate talent and high-minded enthusiasm, sought out for those qualities among the foremost in the ranks of science, if we demand QUI BONO? for what good a Bradley has toiled, or a Maskelyne or a Piazzi has worn out his venerable age in watching, the answer is not to settle mere speculative points in the doctrine of the universe; not to cater for the pride of man by refined inquiries into the remoter mysteries of nature; not to trace the path of our system through space, or its history through past and future eternities.
The discovery of the first known member of the family had indeed been full of interest, and had worthily inaugurated the present century, on the first day of which it was made. For it had been effected in pursuance of a set scheme, and astronomers had almost given up all hopes of success in that scheme when Piazzi announced his detection of little Ceres.
Piazzi died in 1826, Harding in 1834, Olbers in 1840; all those who had prepared or participated in the first discoveries passed away without witnessing their resumption. In 1830, however, a certain Hencke, ex-postmaster in the Prussian town of Driessen, set himself to watch for new planets, and after fifteen long years his patience was rewarded.
As he was pleased to identify himself with the glory, genius, and fortune of the great man whose name he bore, he resolved on a representation of the triumph of Julius Caesar, to be given on the Piazzi di Navona, the ordinary place for holding the carnival fetes.
Piazzi set an example of improved methods of observation, resulting in the publication, in 1803 and 1814, of two catalogues of about 7,600 stars the second being a revision and enlargement of the first which for their time were models of what such works should be. Stephen Groombridge at Blackheath was similarly and most beneficially active.
PIAZZI. A walled-plain, about 90 miles in length, some distance S.E. of Vieta, with a complex broken border, including several depressions on the N.W., rising to about 7000 feet above a rather dark interior, on which there is a prominent central mountain.
Professor Piazzi Smyth's experiences during a trip to the Peak of Teneriffe in 1856 in search of astronomical opportunities gave countenance to the most sanguine hopes of deliverance, at suitable elevated stations, from some of the oppressive conditions of low-level star-gazing; yet for a number of years nothing effectual was done for their realisation.
The five-foot vertical circle, which Piazzi with some difficulty induced Ramsden to complete for him in 1789, was the first divided instrument constructed in what may be called the modern style. This was perhaps the earliest systematic effort to correct the imperfections of instruments by the manner of their use.
When I ceased to be persecuted with examinations, and had no longer anything to fill up my time, I felt bitterly the increasing weight of solitude. I had permission to retain a bible, and my Dante; the governor also placed his library at my disposal, consisting of some romances of Scuderi, Piazzi, and worse books still; but my mind was too deeply agitated to apply to any kind of reading whatever.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking