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Updated: June 17, 2025
Between the observatory of Berlin and the observatory of Vienna the discussion threatened to end in international complications; but Russia, in the person of the director of the observatory at Pulkowa, showed that both were right. It all depended on the point of view from which they attacked the phenomenon, which, though impossible in theory, was possible in practice.
A study of early and later records of observations disclosed to him, in 1851, an apparent progressive approach of the inner edge of the bright ring to the planet. The rate of approach he estimated at about fifty-seven English miles a year, or 11,000 miles during the 194 years elapsed since the time of Huygens. Were it to continue, a collapse of the system must be far advanced within three centuries. But was the change real or illusory a plausible, but deceptive inference from insecure data? M. Struve resolved to put it to the test. A set of elaborately careful micrometrical measures of the dimensions of Saturn's rings, executed by himself at Pulkowa in the autumn of 1851, was provided as a standard of future comparison; and he was enabled to renew them, under closely similar circumstances, in 1882. But the expected diminution of the space between Saturn's globe and his rings had not taken place. A slight extension in the width of the system, both outward and inward, was indeed, hinted at; and it is worth notice that just such a separation of the rings was indicated by Clerk Maxwell's theory, so that there is an
Forty years have elapsed since M. Brédikhine, director successively of the Moscow and of the Pulkowa Observatories, turned his attention to these curious phenomena. His persistent inquiries on the subject, however, date from the appearance of Coggia's comet in 1874.
The Clarks constructed successively, the 18-inch lens for Chicago, the 26-inch for Washington, the 30-inch for Pulkowa, the 36-inch for Lick and the 40-inch for Yerkes. Each in turn was the largest yet made, and each time the Clarks were called upon to surpass the world's record, which they themselves had already established. Have we at length reached the limit in size?
It is, however, in the construction of refracting telescopes that the most conspicuous advances have recently been made. The Harvard College 15-inch achromatic was mounted and ready for work in June, 1847. A similar instrument had already for some years been in its place at Pulkowa.
Cooke, of York, made an object-glass, 25-inch diameter, for Newall, of Gateshead, which has done splendid work at Cambridge. We have the Washington 26-inch by Clark, the Vienna 27-inch by Grubb, the Nice 29-1/2-inch by Gautier, the Pulkowa 30-inch by Clark.
He was then well advanced in years, but full of keen intelligence and devoted to astronomical pursuits. He was in a great measure the founder of the Imperial Observatory at Pulkowa, situated on an appropriate eminence about eight miles from St. Petersburg. The observatory was furnished under his directions with the most magnificent astronomical instruments.
It was noticed about the beginning of the seventeenth century that gamma Virginis was double. In 1836 the stars were so close together that no telescope then in existence was able to separate them, although it is said that the disk into which they had merged was elongated at Pulkowa. In a few years they became easily separable once more.
This, in its turn, was surpassed by two of respectively 29-1/2 and 30 inches, sent by Gautier of Paris to Nice, and by Alvan Clark to Pulkowa; and an object-glass, three feet in diameter, was in 1886 successfully turned out by the latter firm for the Lick Observatory in California.
The fact, however, that he had been deceived is now undoubted. Subsequent research has shown that the Pulkowa telescope, though a very fine instrument, possesses the undesirable quality of making a companion orb for all first-class stars in the position where O. Struve and his assistant Lindenau saw the supposed companion of Procyon.
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