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Not before the early days of September was it generally recognised with the naked eye, though it had been detected without a glass at Pulkowa, August 19. But its growth was thenceforward surprisingly rapid, as it swept with accelerated motion under the hindmost foot of the Great Bear, and past the starry locks of Berenice.
On the 1st of January, 1882, no less than one hundred and forty-four were active within its boundaries. The apparition of the great comet of 1843 gave an additional fillip to the movement. To the excitement caused by it the Harvard College Observatory called the "American Pulkowa" directly owed its origin; and the example was not ineffective elsewhere.
Still, the job was one with which I do not think any astronomical one ever before attempted by a single person could compare in extent. The number of meridian observations on the sun, Mercury, Venus, and Mars alone numbered 62,030. They were made at the observatories of Greenwich, Paris, Königsberg, Pulkowa, Cape of Good Hope, but I need not go over the entire list, which numbers thirteen.
Yet at that time the fifteen-inch achromatic of Pulkowa had already left the workshop of Fraunhofer's successors at Munich. It was not indeed until 1845, when the impost which had so long hampered their efforts was removed, that the optical artists of these islands were able to compete on equal terms with their rivals on the Continent.
Otto Struve was a brother of the very popular Russian minister to Washington during the years 1882-92. He retired from the direction of the Pulkowa Observatory about 1894. The official history of his negotiations and other proceedings for the construction of the telescope will be found in a work published in 1889 in honor of the jubilee of the observatory.
Important series of double-star observations were made by Perrotin at Nice in 1883-4; by Hall, with the 26-inch Washington equatoreal, 1874 to 1891; by Schiaparelli from 1875 onward; by Glasenapp, O. Stone, Leavenworth, Seabroke, and many besides. Finally, Professor Hussey's revision of the Pulkowa Catalogue is a work of the teres atque rotundus kind, which leaves little or nothing to be desired.
In 1835 Struve was summoned by the Emperor Nicholas to superintend the erection of a new observatory at Pulkowa, near St. Petersburg, destined for the special cultivation of sidereal astronomy. Boundless resources were placed at his disposal, and the institution created by him was acknowledged to surpass all others of its kind in splendour, efficiency, and completeness.
His studies, in which at first he had the collaboration of Mr. James South, brought to light scores of hitherto unrecognized pairs, and gave fresh data for the calculation of the orbits of those longer known. So also did the independent researches of F. G. W. Struve, the enthusiastic observer of the famous Russian observatory at the university of Dorpat, and subsequently at Pulkowa.
Three years have passed since I heard the eminent observer Otto Struve, of Pulkowa, give an elaborate account of a companion to the star Procyon, describing the apparent brightness, distance, and motions of this companion body, for the edification of the Astronomer-Royal and many other observers. But I could not then see, nor has any one yet explained, how this could be.
An inquiry into the laws of stellar distribution, undertaken during the early years of his residence at Pulkowa, led Struve to confirm in the main the inferences arrived at by Herschel as to the construction of the heavens.
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