The Siderostat — A Wonderful Instrument to Magnify, View the Moon

1895

Moon at Close Range

A Wonderful Instrument Will Limn Her Figure

Magnified for Us — And at Last We Shall See If She Has Any Queer People on Her — A Frenchman's Hope May Be Realized

Not only to-day but in all ages men have been anxiously endeavoring to solve the mystery of the moon. The ancients made her their goddess, and entered upon no new undertakings without first asking her advice and consulting the probabilities of the influence with which even to-day many superstitious persons endow her.

The lens has long been regarded as the means by which we will be enabled, if at all, to study the moon's mysteries. The only question has been how to make a lens large enough. It seems to have been recognized that there is a limit to what may be called the carrying power of a lens. Alvin Olark, of Cambridge, is the man who makes big lenses, and he has about reached his limit.

Two of these record-breaking lenses are in the great Chicago telescope, and two more are about to be set in the recently mounted telescope in the Paris Observatory. A French scientist, M. Deloncle, proposes to use these lenses for a novel purpose. The plan is said to be more than three-fourths realized. It will require glasses of over forty-nine inches in diameter. A famous French lens-maker is at work on these glasses for an instrument which M. Deloncle calls the siderostat.

With this M. Deloncle hopes to interview the moon and to establish once for all whether that interesting and much-discussed planet is inhabited. It will tell us whether the moon has cities, monuments and larger buildings and also explain its signals to us, if it has any.

Says a French writer of it: "The invention is an ingenious one and demands for its perfection a man, convinced he is right, having, so to speak, plenty of 'pluck.' It is the natural outcome of all that has gone before, from Metius to Mantois; but it belongs especially to the particular genius of its author, because no one before him, not even the most learned astronomers, had dared to imagine so strange and yet so useful an instrument for stellar observation. It is the cannon of 103 tons, the Eiffel Tower, the Great Eastern of optics. The Siderostat surpasses anything of its kind. It does not even bear any resemblance to existing telescopes.

"The spectators will stand and it will lie, pointing its long horizontal tunnel at a mirror fourteen inches in thickness and weighing 13,000 pounds. The image of the satellite will be reflected, and coming out of the ocular will be projected on a screen upon which two, three, five hundred spectators may see the moon. A magnifying glass will enlarge the image to enormous proportions and a very delicate mechanical contrivance will set the mirror in motion, so that it will follow the apparent movements of the planet. The scheme will be gigantic; it will truly be 'Twentieth Century!' The question arises among the doubtful: Will it be practical? After all, negat alter!

"Unfortunately Mme. Moon, the indispensable prima donna of this lunar theater, often disappoints us. In the first place, there will be many evenings when, following in the footsteps of her capricious human sisters, she will decline to come forth from the shadows of her cloudy boudoir. Photography may be brought into requisition, and, like the understudies on the real stage, take the role of the sulking prima donna. In which case the siderostat will be vulgarized to the mean part of a huge magic lantern, which misfortune, for the sake of science, it is to be hoped will never transpire."

—The Perry Bulletin, Perry, IA, Oct. 16, 1895, p. 2.

Proctor the Astronomer

1874

Ten years ago, the name of Richard Anthony Proctor was absolutely unknown; five years later, it was familiar in scientific circles in London, but comparatively unheard of outside; and today it is familiar as household words to every educated man in England, and to many thousands in this country.

Yet, the man who in so brief a space has conquered fame, and attracted the respectful admiration of astronomers in both hemispheres, is only thirty-six years old now, and did not begin to study astronomy till he had passed his five-and-twentieth year. Barely eight summers have flown since his maiden work appeared, and in the interval he has contributed a score of volumes to the library of science, some of them profound, many of them entirely original, and all of them thoroughly elevating and purely philosophic in tone.

In addition to these works, Mr. Proctor has written constantly and voluminously in most of the leading English periodicals, and has fought successfully more than one brilliant and stoutly contested battle with some of the oldest and ablest savans in Europe. Notably was this the case in his memorable struggle with the venerable Astronomer Royal of England, Sir George Airy, who had achieved a world-wide reputation, and had published seven or eight of the nine quarto volumes of his Astronomical Observations, before his young antagonist was born.

The dispute in question arose out of the widely divergent views set forth, upon the one hand, by Airy, and, upon the other, by Proctor, as to the manner in which the approaching Transit of Venus might be utilized to the best advantage. Sir George Airy, having originally, by an unfortunate choice, adopted the approximate process in dealing with the abstruse calculations involved in the working out of this delicate problem, had been strongly advised by Mr. Proctor, so far back as 1869, to adopt by preference the exact process. Delisle's method having been selected by Airy for the Transit of Venus in 1874, his keen-eyed critic at once pointed out that Halley's method was in every way to be preferred, whereas in regard to the next Transit — that of 1882 — Delisle's would be better than Halley's.

He farther insisted, from the first, that the Astronomer Royal, in his selection of points of observation in Hindostan, had overlooked many of the most desirable. And the young astronomer was right in both instances, as is shown by the fact that the leading astronomers of England at their last meeting, in session at the Board of Visitation of Greenwich Observatory, were unanimous in urging the Government to adopt the suggestions made by Proctor four years before.

This is but one out of many similar instances which might be cited of the extraordinary courage, keenness of perception and farsightedness of this the youngest, and, in some respects, the most brilliant, of living astronomers. — Scribner's Magazine.

Uncle Sam Regulates Clocks, Time By Fixed Star

1903

HOW TIME IN THE U.S. IS MADE.

Our Uncle Samuel Always Regulates His Clocks by a Fixed Star.

Strange as it may seem, Uncle Sam does not make use of the sun for reckoning time, but, as already described in St. Nicholas, he turns his attention to some of the regular, steady-going stars, or "fixed stars," as they are called.

Every clear night an astronomer with a big telescope looks at certain of these stars and makes his calculations, from which he can tell just when the sun would cross the seventy-fifth meridian. One of the great clocks in the observatory is called the transmitter or sends out the signal that keeps standard time. This clock is set and regulated by the star time, and then every day at three minutes and fifteen seconds before 12 a switch is turned on and the beats of the pendulum of this clock are sent by electricity over the wires to the telegraph offices in Washington and New York.

When the telegraph operators hear this sound on their instruments they know that the noon signal is about to be sent out, and they at once begin to connect the telegraph wires with other towns and cities, until in a minute or two the "tick, tick" of the clock at Washington is heard in hundreds of telegraph offices. The beats stop at ten seconds before 12 as a notice that the next "tick" will be the noon signal, and so as to give the operators time to connect their wires with the standard timeballs and clocks.

There are timeballs in a great many cities — usually on top of some prominent building, where they can easily be seen. The one at Washington is on the roof of the state, war, and navy department building, at the top of a high pole, ready to drop the instant the signal comes over the wire.

In the government offices at Washington and in many places in other cities there are large clocks connected with the observatory by electricity. These are so arranged that when the 12 o'clock signal is flashed over the wires the hands of each one of these clocks spring to 12, no matter what time the clock may show; in this way hundreds of clocks are set to the correct time each day.

Well, the moment the sun is supposed to cross the 75th meridian, the telegraph instruments give a single tick, the timeballs drop, the clocks begin to strike, and everybody in the district knows it is 12 o'clock. — Clifford Howard in St. Nicholas.

—Davenport Daily Republican, Davenport, Iowa, March 5, 1903, page 2.

Comment: So the famous "ball" that drops on New Year's Eve, is that a "timeball" and does it come from this way of regulating clocks?

Three Wonderful Mirrors, Mount Wilson Observatory

1916

Used In Place of a Telescope In Mount Wilson Observatory.

From Los Angeles by trolley car and burro back up through the pine forests one reaches the Wilson observatory. No dome or gigantic telescope greets the visitor when he gains the summit. A huge Noah's ark of canvas destroys all preconceived ideas of what an observatory should look like, and within three wonderful mirrors take the place of the great tubular telescope of other observatories.

The observatory building is constructed of canvas, the sides being set in the form of tiers of steeply overlapping eaves. This arrangement is calculated to allow for perfect ventilation and is re-enforced by a vertical wall of canvas, which can be raised or lowered at will to obtain an even temperature.

The peculiar arrangement of mirrors that replaces the familiar telescope is the center around which all interest in the observatory revolves. These mirrors are constructed at the Yerkes observatory and are the finest products of the optician's manufacturing skill. The enlarging mirror, which is supported by a pier of stone at the farther end of the building, is of concave glass four inches thick, and the scientists tell us it is of twenty-four inch aperture by sixty foot focus.

The glass is polished ever so often with jewelers' rouge upon pads of chamois skin and is burnished every week or ten days, in order to remove all possible dust. In addition a galvanized cover is kept over it when it is not in use. — Christian Herald.

—Stevens Point Daily Journal, Stevens Point, Wisconsin, July 29, 1916, page 3.