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Updated: June 17, 2025
It was confirmed in 1842-43 with curious exactness by C. A. F. Peters at Pulkowa; but later researches showed that it required increase to nearly half a second. Struve's measurements inspired less confidence.
But neither the cause, amount, or nature of the error could be well determined without more observations than these. Was it not possible that these astronomers had made more than they published? The hope that material of this sort existed was encouraged by the discovery at the Pulkowa Observatory of an old manuscript by the French astronomer Delisle, containing some observations of this kind.
Indeed, as so often happens in fields of discovery, two other workers had almost simultaneously solved the same problem Struve at Pulkowa, where the great Russian observatory, which so long held the palm over all others, had now been established; and Thomas Henderson, then working at the Cape of Good Hope, but afterwards the Astronomer Royal of Scotland.
It made, nevertheless, capricious appearances at South Kensington during that autumn, and again October 21, 1894, while in September, 1892, Bélopolsky could obtain no trace of it on orthochromatic plates exposed with the 30-inch Pulkowa refractor. No fluctuations in the hydrogen-spectrum were betrayed by them; but subordinate lines of unknown origin showed alternate fading and vivification.
The reappearance of this strange appurtenance on three subsequent plates left no doubt of its real existence, visually attested at Pulkowa, February 5, 1886, by one of the first observations made with the 30-inch equatoreal. Much smaller apertures, however, sufficed to disclose the "Maia nebula," once it was known to be there.
I am not aware that the twin instruments of Harvard and Pulkowa, mounted in 1843, have suffered from age, nor am I aware that any of Alvan Clark's instruments are less perfect to-day than when they left the hands of their makers.
At Pulkowa, on the 16th September, Winnecke, the first director of the Strasburg Observatory, observed a faint outer envelope resembling a veil of almost evanescent texture flung somewhat widely over the head. Next evening, the first of the "secondary" tails appeared, possibly as part of the same phenomenon.
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