United States or Tonga ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Inquiries stimulated by visible dependence, and aided by relatively close vicinity, have resulted in a wonderfully minute acquaintance with the features of the single lunar hemisphere open to our inspection. Selenography, in the modern sense, is little more than a hundred years old. It originated with the publication in 1791 of Schröter's Selenotopographische Fragmente.
On the night of April 20, the Vale of Lilies was, by their wanton destructiveness, laid waste with fire; the Government offices were destroyed, and with them the chief part of Schröter's property, including the whole stock of his books and writings. There was worse behind. A few days later, his observatory, which had escaped the conflagration, was broken into, pillaged, and ruined.
Schröter's delineations, accordingly, imperfect though they were, afforded a starting-point for a comparative study of the superficial features of our satellite. The first of the curious objects which he named "rills" was noted by him in 1787.
There are now two operas in aria which I could write, one in two acts, and the other in three. It is a translation interspersed with choruses and dancing, and specially adapted to the French stage. But this one I have not yet got a sight of. Write to me whether you have Schroter's concertos in Salzburg, or Hullmandell's sonatas. I should like to buy them to send to you. Both of them are beautiful.
The intimation that fresh discoveries might be expected in those particular regions was singularly justified by the detection of two bodies now known respectively as Juno and Vesta. The first was found near the predicted spot in Cetus by Harding, Schröter's assistant at Lilienthal, September 2, 1804; the second by Olbers himself in Virgo, after three years of persistent scrutiny, March 29, 1807.
For two years he continued to work in the counting-house by day, and to pore over the Mécanique Céleste and the Differential Calculus by night. But the post of assistant in Schröter's observatory at Lilienthal having become vacant by the removal of Harding to Göttingen in 1805, Olbers procured for him the offer of it.
Word Of The Day