United States or Saint Martin ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Moreover, astronomers are beginning to remark the fact that their observatories appear not to remain permanently in the same position that is, they do not have exactly the same latitude and longitude. Certain of these changes have recently been explained by the discovery of a new and hitherto unnoted movement of the polar axis.
What had been done in the southern hemisphere was mostly the occasional work of individuals and of one or two permanent observatories. The latter were so few in number and so meagre in their outfit that a splendid field was open to the inquirer.
Within the gates, in an enclosure ample and noble, a space that exceeded a hundred square miles, an area sufficient for Paris quintupled, observatories and palaces rose above the roar of human tides that swept in waves through the wide boulevards, surged over the quays, flooded the gardens, eddied through the open-air lupanar, circled among statues of gods and bulls, poured out of the hundred gates, or broke against the polychrome walls and seethed back in the avenues, along which, to the high flourishes of military bands, passed armed hoplites, merchants in long robes, cloaked bedouins, Kelts in bearskins, priests in spangled dresses, tiara'd princes, burdened slaves, kings discrowned, furtive forms prostitutes, pederasts, human wolves, vermin, sheep the flux and reflux of the gigantic city.
But if the controversy was keen in the old world, we can imagine what it was like in that portion of the new of which the United States occupy so vast an area. A Yankee, we know, does not waste time on the road. He takes the street that leads him straight to his end. And the observatories of the American Federation did not hesitate to do their best.
Then Piazzi, Lalande, Groombridge, and Bessel were followed by Argelander with his 324,000 stars, Rumker's Paramatta catalogue of the southern hemisphere, and the frequent catalogues of national observatories. Later the Astronomische Gesellschaft started their great catalogue, the combined work of many observatories. Other southern ones were Gould's at Cordova and Stone's at the Cape.
Thanks to the climate and to these great observatories which rose very early in Chaldæan history all over the plain, the skies could be read like an open book; and the Chaldæans were fond of such reading, because it afforded them, as they thought, a sure means of predicting the future.
As he stepped into the meridian-room, and saw the instruments, he said, 'Collimators? I said, 'You have been in observatories before. 'Oh, yes, Cambridge and Washington, he replied. He seemed much more interested in the observatory than I could possibly expect. I asked him to go on top of the roof, and he said he had not time; yet he stayed long enough to go up several times.
It is said that the temple-towers were used not merely for religious purposes but also as observatories, a use with a view to which this arrangement of their position would have been serviceable.
And if the metaphysicians can never rest till they have taken their watch to pieces and have arrived at a happy positivism as to its structure, though at the risk of bringing it to a no-go, we may be sure that the majority will always take more satisfaction in seeing its hands mysteriously move on, even if they should err a little as to the precise time of day established by the astronomical observatories.
No periodical comet, as I knew, was at this time approaching the neighborhood of the sun, and no stranger of that kind had been detected from the observatories making its way sunward before we left the earth.
Word Of The Day