Astronomy with an Opera-glass

Astronomy with an Opera-glass - A Popular Introduction to the Study of the Starry Heavens with the Simplest of Optical Instruments

Star-gazing was never more popular than it is now. In every civilized country many excellent telescopes are owned and used, often to very good purpose, by persons who are not practical astronomers, but who wish to see for themselves the marvels of the sky, and who occasionally stumble upon something that is new even to professional star-gazers. Yet, notwithstanding this activity in the cultivation of astronomical studies, it is probably safe to assert that hardly one person in a hundred knows the chief stars by name, or can even recognize the principal constellations, much less distinguish the planets from the fixed stars. And of course they know nothing of the intellectual pleasure that accompanies a knowledge of the stars. Modern astronomy is so rapidly and wonderfully linking the earth and the sun together, with all the orbs of space, in the bonds of close physical relationship, that a person of education and general intelligence can offer no valid excuse for not knowing where to look for Sirius or Aldebaran, or the Orion nebula, or the planet Jupiter. As Australia and New Zealand and the islands of the sea are made a part of the civilized world through the expanding influence of commerce and cultivation, so the suns and planets around us are, in a certain sense, falling under the dominion of the restless and resistless mind of man. We have come to possess vested intellectual interests in Mars and Saturn, and in the sun and all his multitude of fellows, which nobody can afford to ignore.[2] A singular proof of popular ignorance of the starry heavens, as well as of popular curiosity concerning any uncommon celestial phenomenon, is furnished by the curious notions prevailing about the planet Venus. When Venus began to attract general attention in the western sky in the early evenings of the spring of 1887, speculation quickly became rife about it, particularly on the great Brooklyn Bridge. As the planet hung dazzlingly bright over the New Jersey horizon, some people appeared to think it was the light of Liberty's torch, mistaking the bronze goddess's real flambeau for a part of the electric-light system of the metropolis. Finally (to judge from the letters written to the newspapers, and the questions asked of individuals supposed to know something about the secrets of the sky), the conviction seems to have become pretty widely distributed that the strange light in the west was no less than an electrically illuminated balloon, nightly sent skyward by Mr. Edison, for no other conceivable reason than a wizardly desire to mystify his fellow-men. I have positive information that this ridiculous notion has been actually entertained by more than one person of intelligence. And as Venus glowed with increasing splendor in the serene evenings of June, she continued to be mistaken for some petty artificial light instead of the magnificent world that she was, sparkling out there in the sunshine like a globe of burnished silver. Yet Venus as an evening star is not so rare a phenomenon that people of intelligence should be surprised at it. Once in every 584 days she reappears at the same place in the sunset sky No eye can fail to note her, and as the nearest and most beautiful of the Earth's sisters it would seem that everybody should be as familiar with her appearance as with the[3] face of a friend. But the popular ignorance of Venus, and the other members of the planetary family to which our mother, the Earth, belongs, is only an index of the denser ignorance concerning the starsthe brothers of our great father, the Sun. I believe this ignorance is largely due to mere indifference, which, in its turn, arises from a false and pedantic method of presenting astronomy as a creature of mathematical formul, and a humble handmaiden of the art of navigation. I do not, of course, mean to cast doubt upon the scientific value of technical work in astronomy. The science could not exist without it. Those who have made the spectroscope reveal the composition of the sun and stars, and who are now making photography picture the heavens as they are, and even reveal phenomena which lie beyond the range of human vision, are the men who have taken astronomy out of its swaddling-clothes, and set it on its feet as a progressive science. But when one sees the depressing and repellent effect that has evidently been produced upon the popular mind by the ordinary methods of presenting astronomy, one can not resist the temptation to utter a vigorous protest, and to declare that this glorious science is not the grinning mathematical skeleton that it has been represented to be. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 36741
Author: Serviss, Garrett Putman
Release Date: Jul 15, 2011
Format: eBook
Language: English