In the course of his early gropings towards a law of the planetary distances, Kepler tried the experiment of setting a planet, invisible by reason of its smallness, to revolve in the vast region of seemingly desert space separating Mars from Jupiter.[195] The disproportionate magnitude of the same interval was explained by Kant as due to the overweening size of Jupiter. The zone in which each planet moved was, according to the philosopher of Königsberg, to be regarded as the empty storehouse from which its materials had been derived. A definite relation should thus exist between the planetary masses and the planetary intervals.[196] Lambert, on the other hand, sportively suggested that the body or bodies (for it is noticeable that he speaks of them in the plural) which once bridged this portentous gap in the solar system, might, in some remote age, have been swept away by a great comet, and forced to attend its wanderings through space.[197]
These speculations were destined before long to assume a more definite form. Johann Daniel Titius, a professor at Wittenberg (where he died in 1796), pointed out in 1772, in a note to a translation of Bonnet's Contemplation de la Nature,[198] the existence of a remarkable symmetry in the disposition of the bodies constituting the solar system. By a certain series of numbers, increasing in regular progression,[199] he showed that the distances of the six known planets from the sun might be represented with a close approach to accuracy. But with one striking interruption. The term of the[Pg 72] series succeeding that which corresponded to the orbit of Mars was without a celestial representative. The orderly flow of the sequence was thus singularly broken. The space where a planet should—in fulfilment of the "Law"—have revolved, was, it appeared, untenanted. Johann Elert Bode, then just about to begin his long career as leader of astronomical thought and work at Berlin, marked at once the anomaly, and filled the vacant interval with a hypothetical planet. The discovery of Uranus, at a distance falling but slightly short of perfect conformity with the law of Titius, lent weight to a seemingly hazardous prediction, and Von Zach was actually at the pains, in 1785, to calculate what he termed "analogical" elements[200] for this unseen and (by any effect or influence) unfelt body. The search for it, through confessedly scarcely less chimerical than that of alchemists for the philosopher's stone, he kept steadily in view for fifteen years, and at length (September 21, 1800) succeeded in organising, in combination with five other German astronomers assembled at Lilienthal, a force of what he jocularly termed celestial police, for the express purpose of tracking and intercepting the fugitive subject of the sun. The zodiac was accordingly divided for purposes of scrutiny into twenty-four zones; their apportionment to separate observers was in part effected, and the association was rapidly getting into working order, when news arrived that the missing planet had been found, through no systematic plan of search, but by the diligent, though otherwise directed labours of a distant watcher of the skies.
Giuseppe Piazzi was born at Ponte in the Valtelline, July 16, 1746. He studied at various places and times under Tiraboschi, Beccaria, Jacquier, and Le Sueur; and having entered the Theatine order of monks at the age of eighteen, he taught philosophy, science, and theology in several of the Italian cities, as well as in Malta, until 1780, when the chair of mathematics in the University of Palermo was offered to and accepted by him. Prince Caramanico, then viceroy of Sicily, had scientific leanings, and was easily won over to the project of building an observatory, a commodious foundation for which was afforded by one of the towers of the viceregal palace. This architecturally incongruous addition to an ancient Saracenic edifice—once the abode of Kelbite and Zirite Emirs—was completed in February, 1791. Piazzi, meanwhile, had devoted nearly three years to the assiduous study of his new profession, acquiring a practical knowledge of Lalande's methods at the École Militaire, and of Maskelyne's at the Royal Observatory; and returned to Palermo in 1789, bringing with him, in the great five-foot circle which he had prevailed upon Ramsden to construct,[Pg 73] the most perfect measuring instrument hitherto employed by an astronomer.
He had been above nine years at work on his star-catalogue, and was still profoundly unconscious that a place amongst the Lilienthal band[201] of astronomical detectives was being held in reserve for him, when, on the first evening of the nineteenth century, January 1, 1801, he noticed the position of an eighth-magnitude star in a part of the constellation Taurus to which an error of Wollaston's had directed his special attention. Reobserving, according to his custom, the same set of fifty stars on four consecutive nights, it seemed to him, on the 2nd, that the one in question had slightly shifted its position to the west; on the 3rd he assured himself of the fact, and believed that he had chanced upon a new kind of comet without tail or coma. The wandering body, whatever its nature, exchanged retrograde for direct motion on January 14,[202] and was carefully watched by Piazzi until February 11, when a dangerous illness interrupted his observations. He had, however, not omitted to give notice of his discovery; but so precarious were communications in those unpeaceful times, that his letter to Oriani of January 23 did not reach Milan until April 5, while a missive of one day later addressed to Bode came to hand at Berlin, March 20. The delay just afforded time for the publication, by a young philosopher of Jena named Hegel, of a "Dissertation" showing, by the clearest light of reason, that the number of the planets could not exceed seven, and exposing the folly of certain devotees of induction who sought a new celestial body merely to fill a gap in a numerical series.[203]
Unabashed by speculative scorn, Bode had scarcely read Piazzi's letter when he concluded that it referred to the precise body in question. The news spread rapidly, and created a profound sensation, not unmixed with alarm lest this latest addition to the solar family should have been found only to be again lost. For by that time Piazzi's moving star was too near the sun to be any longer visible, and in order to rediscover it after conjunction a tolerably accurate knowledge of its path was indispensable. But a planetary orbit had never before been calculated from such scanty data as Piazzi's observation afforded;[204] and the attempts made by nearly every astronomer of note in Germany to compass the problem were manifestly inadequate, failing even to account for the positions in which the body had been actually seen, and à fortiori serving only to[Pg 74] mislead as to the places where, from September, 1801, it ought once more to have become discernible. It was in this extremity that the celebrated mathematician Gauss came to the rescue. He was then in his twenty-fifth year, and was earning his bread by tuition at Brunswick, with many possibilities, but no settled career before him. The news from Palermo may be said to have converted him from an arithmetician into an astronomer. He was already in possession of a new and more general method of computing elliptical orbits; and the system of "least squares," which he had devised though not published, enabled him to extract the most probable result from a given set of observations. Armed with these novel powers, he set to work; and the communication in November of his elements and ephemeris for the lost object revived the drooping hopes of the little band of eager searchers. Their patience, however, was to be still further tried. Clouds, mist, and sleet seemed to have conspired to cover the retreat of the fugitive; but on the last night of the year the sky cleared unexpectedly with the setting in of a hard frost, and there, in the north-western part of Virgo, nearly in the position assigned by Gauss to the runaway planet, a strange star was discerned by Von Zach[205] at Gotha, and on a subsequent evening—the anniversary of the original discovery—by Olbers at Bremen. The name of Ceres (as the tutelary goddess of Sicily) was, by Piazzi's request, bestowed upon this first known of the numerous, and probably all but innumerable family of the minor planets.
The recognition of the second followed as the immediate consequence of the detection of the first. Olbers had made himself so familiar with the positions of the small stars along the track of the long-missing body, that he was at once struck (March 28, 1802) with the presence of an intruder near the spot where he had recently identified Ceres. He at first believed the new-comer to be a variable star usually inconspicuous, but just then at its maximum of brightness; but within two hours he had convinced himself that it was no fixed star, but a rapidly moving object. The aid of Gauss was again invoked, and his prompt calculations showed that this fresh celestial acquaintance (named "Pallas" by Olbers), revolved round the sun at nearly the same mean distance as Ceres, and was beyond question of a strictly analogous character.
This result was perplexing in the extreme. The symmetry and simplicity of the planetary scheme appeared fatally compromised by the admission of many, where room could, according to old-fashioned rules, only be found for one. A daring hypothesis of[Pg 75] Olbers's invention provided an exit from the difficulty. He supposed that both Ceres and Pallas were fragments of a primitive trans-Martian planet, blown to pieces in the remote past, either by the action of internal forces or by the impact of a comet; and predicted that many more such fragments would be found to circulate in the same region. He, moreover, pointed out that these numerous orbits, however much they might differ in other respects, must all have a common line of intersection,[206] and that the bodies moving in them must consequently pass, at each revolution, through two opposite points of the heavens, one situated in the Whale, the other in the constellation of the Virgin, where already Pallas had been found and Ceres recaptured. 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.
The theory of an exploded planet now seemed to have everything in its favour. It required that the mean or average distances of the newly-discovered bodies should be nearly the same, but admitted a wide range of variety in the shapes and positions of their orbits, provided always that they preserved common points of intersection. These conditions were fulfilled with a striking approach to exactness. Three of the four "asteroids" (a designation introduced by Sir. W. Herschel[207]) conformed with very approximate precision to "Bode's law" of distances; they all traversed, in their circuits round the sun, nearly the same parts of Cetus and Virgo; while the eccentricities and inclinations of their paths departed widely from the planetary type—that of Pallas, to take an extreme instance, making with the ecliptic an angle of nearly 35°. The minuteness of these bodies appeared further to strengthen the imputation of a fragmentary character. Herschel estimated the diameter of Ceres at 162, that of Pallas at 147 miles.[208] But these values are now known to be considerably too small. A suspected variability of brightness in some of the asteroids, somewhat hazardously explained as due to the irregularities of figure to be expected in cosmical potsherds (so to[Pg 76] speak), was added to the confirmatory evidence.[209] The strong point of the theory, however, lay not in what it explained, but in what it had predicted. It had been twice confirmed by actual exploration of the skies, and had produced, in the recognition of Vesta, the first recorded instance of the premeditated discovery of a heavenly body.
The view not only commended itself to the facile imagination of the unlearned, but received the sanction of the highest scientific authority. The great Lagrange bestowed upon it his analytical imprimatur, showing that the explosive forces required to produce the supposed catastrophe came well within the bounds of possibility; since a velocity of less than twenty times that of a cannon-ball leaving the gun's mouth would have sufficed, according to his calculation, to launch the asteroidal fragments on their respective paths. Indeed, he was disposed to regard the hypothesis of disruption as more generally available than its author had designed it to be, and proposed to supplement with it, as explanatory of the eccentric orbits of comets, the nebular theory of Laplace, thereby obtaining, as he said, "a complete view of the origin of the planetary system more conformable to Nature and mechanical laws than any yet proposed."[210]
Nevertheless the hypothesis of Olbers has not held its ground. It seemed as if all the evidence available for its support had been produced at once and spontaneously, while the unfavourable items were elicited slowly, and, as it were, by cross-examination. A more extended acquaintance with the group of bodies whose peculiarities it was framed to explain has shown them, after all, as recalcitrant to any such explanation. Coincidences at the first view significant and striking have been swamped by contrary examples; and a hasty general conclusion has, by a not uncommon destiny, at last perished under the accumulation of particulars. Moreover, as has been remarked by Professor Newcomb,[211] mutual perturbations would rapidly efface all traces of a common disruptive origin, and the catastrophe, to be perceptible in its effects, should have been comparatively recent.
A new generation of astronomers had arisen before any additions were made to the little family of the minor planets. Piazzi died in 1826, Harding in 1834, Olbers in 1840; all those who had prepared or participated in the first discoveries passed away without witnessing their resumption. In 1830, however, a certain Hencke, ex-postmaster in the Prussian town of Driessen, set himself to watch for new planets, and after fifteen long years his patience was rewarded. The asteroid[Pg 77] found by him, December 8, 1845, received the name of Astræa, and his further prosecution of the search resulted, July 1, 1847, in the discovery of Hebe. A few weeks later (August 13), John Russell Hind (1823-1893), after many months' exploration from Mr. Bishop's observatory in the Regent's Park, picked up Iris, and October 18, Flora.[212] The next on the list was Metis, found by Mr. Graham, April 25, 1848, at Markree, in Ireland.[213] At the close of the period to which our attention is at present limited, the number of these small bodies known to astronomy was thirteen; and the course of discovery has since proceeded far more rapidly and with less interruption.
Both in itself and in its consequences the recognition of the minor planets was of the highest importance to science. The traditional ideas regarding the constitution of the solar system were enlarged by the admission of a new class of bodies, strongly contrasted, yet strictly co-ordinate with the old-established planetary order; the profusion of resource, so conspicuous in the living kingdoms of Nature, was seen to prevail no less in the celestial spaces; and some faint preliminary notion was afforded of the indefinite complexity of relations underlying the apparent simplicity of the majestic scheme to which our world belongs. Both theoretical and practical astronomy derived profit from the admission of these apparently insignificant strangers to the rights of citizenship of the solar system. The disturbance of their motions by their giant neighbours afforded a more accurate knowledge of the Jovian mass, which Laplace had taken about 1/50 too small; the anomalous character of their orbits presented geometers with highly stimulating problems in the theory of perturbation; while the exigencies of the first discovery had produced the Theoria Motus, and won Gauss over to the ranks of calculating astronomy. Moreover, the sure prospect of further detections powerfully incited to the exploration of the skies; observers became more numerous and more zealous in view of the prizes held out to them; star-maps were diligently constructed, and the sidereal multitude strewn along the great zodiacal belt acquired a fresh interest when it was perceived that its least conspicuous member might be a planetary shred or projectile in the dignified disguise of a distant sun. Harding's "Celestial Atlas," designed for the special purpose of facilitating asteroidal research, was the first systematic attempt to represent to the eye the telescopic aspect of the heavens. It was while engaged on its construction that the Lilienthal observer successfully intercepted Juno on her passage through the Whale in 1804; whereupon promoted to Göttingen, he there completed, in 1822, the arduous task so opportunely entered[Pg 78] upon a score of years previously. Still more important were the great star-maps of the Berlin Academy, undertaken at Bessel's suggestion, with the same object of distinguishing errant from fixed stars, and executed, under Encke's supervision, during the years 1830-59. They have played a noteworthy part in the history of planetary discovery, nor of the minor kind alone.
We have now to recount an event unique in scientific history. The discovery of Neptune has been characterised as the result of a "movement of the age,"[214] and with some justice. It had become necessary to the integrity of planetary theory. Until it was accomplished, the phantom of an unexplained anomaly in the orderly movements of the solar system must have continued to haunt astronomical consciousness. Moreover, it was prepared by many, suggested as possible by not a few, and actually achieved, simultaneously, independently, and completely, by two investigators.
The position of the planet Uranus was recorded as that of a fixed star no less than twenty times between 1690 and the epoch of its final detection by Herschel. But these early observations, far from affording the expected facilities for the calculation of its orbit, proved a source of grievous perplexity. The utmost ingenuity of geometers failed to combine them satisfactorily with the later Uranian places, and it became evident, either that they were widely erroneous, or that the revolving body was wandering from its ancient track. The simplest course was to reject them altogether, and this was done in the new Tables published in 1821 by Alexis Bouvard, the indefatigable computating partner of Laplace. But the trouble was not thus to be got rid of. After a few years fresh irregularities began to appear, and continued to increase until absolutely "intolerable." It may be stated as illustrative of the perfection to which astronomy had been brought, that divergencies regarded as menacing the very foundation of its theories never entered the range of unaided vision. In other words, if the theoretical and the real Uranus had been placed side by side in the sky, they would have seemed, to the sharpest eye, to form a single body.[215]
The idea that these enigmatical disturbances were due to the attraction of an unknown exterior body was a tolerably obvious one; and we accordingly find it suggested in many different quarters. Bouvard himself was perhaps the first to conceive it. He kept the[Pg 79] possibility continually in view, and bequeathed to his nephew's diligence the inquiry into its reality when he felt that his own span was drawing to a close; but before any progress had been made with it, he had already (June 7, 1843) "ceased to breathe and to calculate." The Rev. T. J. Hussey actually entertained in 1834 the notion, but found his powers inadequate to the task, of assigning an approximate place to the disturbing body; and Bessel, in 1840, laid his plans for an assault in form upon the Uranian difficulty, the triumphant exit from which fatal illness frustrated his hopes of effecting or even witnessing.
The problem was practically untouched when, in 1841, an undergraduate of St. John's College, Cambridge, formed the resolution of grappling with it. The projected task was an arduous one. There were no guiding precedents for its conduct. Analytical obstacles had to be encountered so formidable as to appear invincible even to such a mathematician as Airy. John Couch Adams, however, had no sooner taken his degree, which he did as senior wrangler in January, 1843, than he set resolutely to work, and on October 21, 1845, was able to communicate to the Astronomer Royal numerical estimates of the elements and mass of the unknown planet, together with an indication of its actual place in the heavens. These results, it has been well said,[216] gave "the final and inexorable proof" of the validity of Newton's Law. The date October 21, 1845, "may therefore be regarded as marking a distinct epoch in the history of gravitational astronomy."
Sir George Biddell Airy had begun in 1835 his long and energetic administration of the Royal Observatory, and was already in possession of data vitally important to the momentous inquiry then on foot. At his suggestion, and under his superintendence, the reduction of all the planetary observations made at Greenwich from 1750 onwards had been undertaken in 1833. The results, published in 1846, constituted a permanent and universal stock of materials for the correction of planetary theory. But in the meantime, investigators, both native and foreign, were freely supplied with the "places and errors," which, clearly exhibiting the discrepancies between observation and calculation—between what was and what was expected—formed the very groundwork of future improvements.
Mr. Adams had no reason to complain of official discourtesy. His labours received due and indispensable aid; but their purpose was regarded as chimerical. "I have always," Sir George Airy wrote,[217] "considered the correctness of a distant mathematical result to be a subject rather of moral than of mathematical evidence." And that[Pg 80] actually before him seemed, from its very novelty, to incur a suspicion of unlikelihood. No problem in planetary disturbance had heretofore been attacked, so to speak, from the rear. The inverse method was untried, and might well be deemed impracticable. For the difficulty of determining the perturbations produced by a given planet is small compared with the difficulty of finding a planet by its resulting perturbations. Laplace might have quailed before it; yet it was now grappled with as a first essay in celestial dynamics. Moreover, Adams unaccountably neglected to answer until too late a question regarded by Airy in the light of an experimentum crucis as to the soundness of the new theory. Nor did he himself take any steps to obtain a publicity which he was more anxious to merit than to secure. The investigation consequently remained buried in obscurity. It is now known that had a search been instituted in the autumn of 1845 for the remote body whose existence had been so marvellously foretold, it would have been found within three and a half lunar diameters (1° 49′) of the spot assigned to it by Adams.
A competitor, however, equally daring and more fortunate—audax fortunâ adjutus, as Gauss said of him—was even then entering the field. Urbain Jean Joseph Leverrier, the son of a small Government employé in Normandy, was born at Saint-Lô, March 11, 1811. He studied with brilliant success at the École Polytechnique, accepted the post of astronomical teacher there in 1837, and, "docile to circumstance," immediately concentrated the whole of his vast, though as yet undeveloped powers upon the formidable problems, of celestial mechanics. He lost no time in proving to the mathematical world that the race of giants was not extinct. Two papers on the stability of the solar system, presented to the Academy of Sciences, September 16 and October 14, 1839, showed him to be the worthy successor of Lagrange and Laplace, and encouraged hopes destined to be abundantly realised. His attention was directed by Arago to the Uranian difficulty in 1845, when he cheerfully put aside certain intricate cometary researches upon which he happened to be engaged, in order to obey with dutiful promptitude the summons of the astronomical chief of France. In his first memoir on the subject (communicated to the Academy, November 10, 1845), he proved the inadequacy of all known causes of disturbance to account for the vagaries of Uranus; in a second (June 1, 1848), he demonstrated that only an exterior body, occupying at a certain date a determinate position in the zodiac, could produce the observed effects; in a third (August 31, 1846), he assigned the orbit of the disturbing body, and announced its visibility as an object with a sensible disc about as bright as a star of the eighth magnitude.
The question was now visibly approaching an issue. On September[Pg 81] 10, Sir John Herschel declared to the British Association respecting the hypothetical new planet: "We see it as Columbus saw America from the coast of Spain. Its movements have been felt, trembling along the far-reaching line of our analysis with a certainty hardly inferior to that of ocular demonstration." Less than a fortnight later, September 23, Professor Galle, of the Berlin Observatory, received a letter from Leverrier requesting his aid in the telescopic part of the inquiry already analytically completed. He directed his refractor to the heavens that same night, and perceived, within less than a degree of the spot indicated, an object with a measurable disc nearly three seconds in diameter. Its absence from Bremiker's recently-completed map of that region of the sky showed it to be no star, and its movement in the predicted direction confirmed without delay the strong persuasion of its planetary nature.[218]
In this remarkable manner the existence of the remote member of our system known as "Neptune" was ascertained. But the discovery, which faithfully reflected the duplicate character of the investigation which led to it, had been already secured at Cambridge before it was announced from Berlin. Sir George Airy's incredulity vanished in the face of the striking coincidence between the position assigned by Leverrier to the unknown planet in June, and that laid down by Adams in the previous October; and on the 9th of July he wrote to Professor Challis, director of the Cambridge Observatory, recommending a search with the great Northumberland equatoreal. Had a good star-map been at hand, the process would have been a simple one; but of Bremiker's "Hora XXI." no news had yet reached England, and there was no other sufficiently comprehensive to be available for an inquiry which, in the absence of such aid, promised to be both long and laborious. As the event proved, it might have been neither. "After four days of observing," Challis wrote, October 12, 1846, to Airy, "the planet was in my grasp if only I had examined or mapped the observations."[219] Had he done so, the first honours in the discovery, both theoretical and optical, would have fallen to the University of Cambridge. But Professor Challis had other astronomical avocations to attend to, and, moreover, his faith in the precision of the indications furnished to him was, by his own confession, a very feeble one. For both reasons he postponed to a later stage of the proceedings the discussion and comparison of the data nightly furnished to him by his telescope, and thus allowed to lie, as it were, latent in his observations the [Pg 82] momentous result which his diligence had insured, but which his delay suffered to be anticipated.[220]
Nevertheless, it should not be forgotten that the Berlin astronomer had two circumstances in his favour apart from which his swift success could hardly have been achieved. The first was the possession of a good star-map; the second was the clear and confident nature of Leverrier's instructions. "Look where I tell you," he seemed authoritatively to say, "and you will see an object such as I describe."[221] And in fact, not only Galle on the 23rd of September, but also Challis on the 29th, immediately after reading the French geometer's lucid and impressive treatise, picked out from among the stellar points strewing the zodiac, a small planetary disc, which eventually proved to be that of the precise body he had been in search of during two months.
The controversy that ensued had its ignominious side; but it was entered into by neither of the parties principally concerned. Adams bore the disappointment, which the dilatory proceedings at Greenwich and Cambridge had inflicted upon him, with quiet heroism. His silence on the subject of what another man would have called his wrongs remained unbroken to the end of his life;[222] and he took every opportunity of testifying his admiration for the genius of Leverrier.
Personal questions, however, vanish in the magnitude of the event they relate to. By it the last lingering doubts as to the absolute exactness of the Newtonian Law were dissipated. Recondite analytical methods received a confirmation brilliant and intelligible even to the minds of the vulgar, and emerged from the patient solitude of the study to enjoy an hour of clamorous triumph. For ever invisible to the unaided eye of man, a sister-globe to our earth was shown to circulate, in perpetual frozen exile, at thirty times its distance from the sun. Nay, the possibility was made apparent that the limits of our system were not even thus reached, but that yet profounder abysses of space might shelter obedient, though little favoured, members of the solar family, by future astronomers to be recognised through the sympathetic thrillings of Neptune, even as Neptune himself was recognised through the tell-tale deviations of Uranus.
It is curious to find that the fruit of Adams's and Leverrier's[Pg 83] laborious investigations had been accidentally all but snatched half a century before it was ripe to be gathered. On the 8th, and again on the 10th of May, 1795, Lalande noted the position of Neptune as that of a fixed star, but perceiving that the two observations did not agree, he suppressed the first as erroneous, and pursued the inquiry no further. An immortality which he would have been the last to despise hung in the balance; the feather-weight of his carelessness, however, kicked the beam, and the discovery was reserved to be more hardly won by later comers.
Bode's Law did good service in the quest for a trans-Uranian planet by affording ground for a probable assumption as to its distance. A starting-point for approximation was provided by it; but it was soon found to be considerably at fault. Even Uranus is about 36 millions of miles nearer to the sun than the order of progression requires; and Neptune's vast distance of 2,800 million should be increased by no less than 800 million miles, and its period of 165 lengthened out to 225 years,[223] in order to bring it into conformity with the curious and unexplained rule which planetary discoveries have alternately tended to confirm and to invalidate.
Within seventeen days of its identification with the Berlin achromatic, Neptune was found to be attended by a satellite. This discovery was the first notable performance of the celebrated two-foot reflector[224] erected by Mr. Lassell at his suggestively named residence of Starfield, near Liverpool. William Lassell was a brewer by profession, but by inclination an astronomer. Born at Bolton in Lancashire, June 18, 1799, he closed a life of eminent usefulness to science, October 5, 1818, thus spanning with his well-spent years four-fifths of the momentous period which we have undertaken to traverse. At the age of twenty-one, being without the means to purchase, he undertook to construct telescopes, and naturally turned his attention to the reflecting sort, as favouring amateur efforts by the comparative simplicity of its structure. His native ingenuity was remarkable, and was developed by the hourly exigencies of his successive enterprises. Their uniform success encouraged him to enlarge his aims, and in 1844 he visited Birr Castle for the purpose of inspecting the machine used in polishing the giant speculum of Parsonstown. In the construction of his new instrument, however, he eventually discarded the model there obtained, and worked on a method of his own, assisted by the supreme mechanical skill of James Nasmyth. The result was a Newtonian of exquisite definition, with an aperture of two, and a focal length of twenty feet,[Pg 84] provided by a novel artifice with the equatoreal mounting, previously regarded as available only for refractors.
This beautiful instrument afforded to its maker, October 10, 1846, a cursory view of a Neptunian attendant. But the planet was then approaching the sun, and it was not until the following July that the observation could be verified, which it was completely, first by Lassell himself, and somewhat later by Otto Stuve and Bond of Cambridge (U.S.). When it is considered that this remote object shines by reflecting sunlight reduced by distance to 1/900th of the intensity with which it illuminates our moon, the fact of its visibility, even in the most perfect telescopes, is a somewhat surprising one. It can only, indeed, be accounted for by attributing to it dimensions very considerable for a body of the secondary order. It shares with the moons of Uranus the peculiarity of retrograde motion; that is to say, its revolutions, running counter to the grand current of movement in the solar system, are performed from east to west, in a plane inclined at an angle of 35° to that of the ecliptic. Their swiftness serves to measure the mass of the globe round which they are performed. For while our moon takes twenty-seven days and nearly eight hours to complete its circuit of the earth, the satellite of Neptune, at a distance not greatly inferior, sweeps round its primary in five days and twenty-one hours, showing (according to a very simple principle of computation) that it is urged by a force seventeen times greater than the terrestrial pull upon the lunar orb. Combining this result with those of Professor Barnard's[225] and Dr. See's[226] recent measurements of the small telescopic disc of this farthest known planet, it is found that while in mass Neptune equals seventeen, in bulk it is equivalent to forty-nine earths. This is as much as to say that it is composed of relatively very light materials, or more probably of materials distended by internal heat, as yet unwasted by radiation into space, to about five times the volume they would occupy in the interior of our globe. The fact, at any rate, is fairly well ascertained, that the average density of Neptune is about twice that of water.
We must now turn from this late-recognised member of our system to bestow some brief attention upon the still fruitful field of discovery offered by one of the immemorial five. The family of Saturn, unlike that of its brilliant neighbour, has been gradually introduced to the notice of astronomers. Titan, the sixth Saturnian moon in order of distance, led the way, being detected by Huygens, March 25, 1655; Cassini made the acquaintance of four more between 1671 and 1684; while Mimas and Enceladus, the two innermost, were caught by Herschel in 1789, as they threaded their lucid[Pg 85] way along the edge of the almost vanished ring. In the distances of these seven revolving bodies from their primary, an order of progression analogous to that pointed out by Titius in the planetary intervals was found to prevail; but with one conspicuous interruption, similar to that which had first suggested the search for new members of the solar system. Between Titan and Japetus—the sixth and seventh reckoning outwards—there was obviously room for another satellite. It was discovered on both sides of the Atlantic simultaneously, on the 19th of September, 1848. Mr. W. C. Bond, employing the splendid 15-inch refractor of the Harvard Observatory, noticed, September 16, a minute star situated in the plane of Saturn's rings. The same object was discerned by Mr. Lassell on the 18th. On the following evening, both observers perceived that the problematical speck of light kept up with, instead of being left behind by the planet as it moved, and hence inferred its true character.[227] Hyperion, the seventh by distance and eighth by recognition of Saturn's attendant train, is of so insignificant a size when compared with some of its fellow-moons (Titan is but little inferior to the planet Mars), as to have suggested to Sir John Herschel[228] the idea that it might be only one of several bodies revolving very close together—in fact, an asteroidal satellite; but the conjecture has, so far, not been verified.
The coincidence of its duplicate discovery was singularly paralleled two years later. Galileo's amazement when his "optic glass" revealed to him the "triple" form of Saturn—planeta tergeminus—has proved to be, like the laughter of the gods, "inextinguishable." It must revive in every one who contemplates anew the unique arrangements of that world apart known to us as the Saturnian system. The resolution of the so-called ansæ, or "handles," into one encircling ring by Huygens in 1655, the discovery by Cassini in 1675 of the division of that ring into two concentric ones, together with Laplace's investigation of the conditions of stability of such a formation, constituted, with some minor observations, the sum of the knowledge obtained, up to the middle of the last century, on the subject of this remarkable formation. The first place in the discovery now about to be related belongs to an American astronomer.
William Cranch Bond, born in 1789 at Portland, in the State of Maine, was a watchmaker, whom the solar eclipse of 1806 attracted to study the wonders of the heavens. When, in 1815, the erection of an observatory in connection with Harvard College, Cambridge, was first contemplated, he undertook a mission to England for the purpose of studying the working of similar institutions there, and on[Pg 86] his return erected a private observatory at Dorchester, where he worked diligently for many years. Then at last, in 1843, the long-postponed design of the Harvard authorities was resumed, and on the completion of the new establishment, Bond, who had been from 1838 officially connected with the College and had carried on his scientific labours within its precincts, was offered and accepted the post of its director. Placed in 1847 in possession of one of the finest instruments in the world—a masterpiece of Merz and Mahler—he headed the now long list of distinguished Transatlantic observers. Like the elder Struve, he left an heir to his office and to his eminence, but George Bond unfortunately died in 1865, at the early age of thirty-nine, having survived his father but six years.
On the night of November 15, 1850—the air, remarkably enough, being so hazy that only the brightest stars could be perceived with the naked eye—William Bond discerned a dusky ring, extending about halfway between the inner brighter one and the globe of Saturn. A fortnight later, but before the observation had been announced in England, the same appearance was seen by the Rev. W. R. Dawes with the comparatively small refractor of his observatory at Wateringbury, and on December 3 was described by Mr. Lassell (then on a visit to him) as "something like a crape veil covering a part of the sky within the inner ring."[229] Next morning the Times containing the report of Bond's discovery reached Wateringbury. The most surprising circumstance in the matter was that the novel appendage had remained so long unrecognised. As the rings opened out to their full extent, it became obvious with very moderate optical assistance; yet some of the most acute observers who have ever lived, using instruments of vast power, had heretofore failed to detect its presence. It soon appeared, however, that Galle of Berlin[230] had noticed, June 10, 1838, a veil-like extension of the lucid ring across half the dark space separating it from the planet; but the observation, although communicated at the time to the Berlin Academy of Sciences, had remained barren. Traces of the dark ring, moreover, were found in drawings executed by Campani in 1664[231] and by Hooke in 1666;[232] while Picard (June 15, 1673),[233] Hadley (spring of 1720),[234] and Herschel,[235] had all undoubtedly seen it under the aspect of a dark bar or belt crossing the Saturnian globe. It was, then, of no recent origin; but there seemed reason to think that it had lately gained considerably in brightness. The full[Pg 87] meaning of this suspected change it was reserved for later investigations to develop.
What we may, in a certain sense, call the closing result of the race for discovery, in which several observers seemed at that time to be engaged, was the establishment, on a satisfactory footing, of our acquaintance with the dependent system of Uranus. Sir William Herschel, whose researches formed, in so many distinct lines of astronomical inquiry, the starting-points of future knowledge, detected, January 11, 1787,[236] two Uranian moons, since called Oberon and Titania, and ascertained the curious circumstance of their motion in a plane almost at right angles to the ecliptic, in a direction contrary to that of all previously known denizens (other than cometary) of the solar kingdom. He believed that he caught occasional glimpses of four more, but never succeeded in assuring himself of their substantial existence. Even the two first remained unseen save by himself until 1828, when his son re-observed them with a 20-foot reflector, similar to that with which they had been originally discovered. Thenceforward they were kept fairly within view, but their four questionable companions, in spite of some false alarms of detection, remained in the dubious condition in which Herschel had left them. At last, on October 24, 1851,[237] after some years of fruitless watching, Lassell espied "Ariel" and "Umbriel," two Uranian attendants, interior to Oberon and Titania, and of about half their brightness; so that their disclosure is still reckoned amongst the very highest proofs of instrumental power and perfection. In all probability they were then for the first time seen; for although Professor Holden[238] made out a plausible case in favour of the fitful visibility to Herschel of each of them in turn, Lassell's argument[239] that the glare of the planet in Herschel's great specula must have rendered almost impossible the perception of objects so minute and so close to its disc, appears tolerably decisive to the contrary. Uranus is thus attended by four moons, and, so far as present knowledge extends, by no more. Among the most important of the "negative results"[240] secured by Lassell's observations at Malta during the years 1852-53 and 1861-65, were the convincing evidence afforded by them that, without great increase of optical power, no further Neptunian or Uranian satellites can be perceived, and the consequent relegation of Herschel's baffling quartette, notwithstanding the unquestioned place long assigned to them in astronomical text-books, to the Nirvana of non-existence.
FOOTNOTES:
[195] Op., t. i., p. 107. He interposed, but tentatively only, another similar body between Mercury and Venus.
[196] Allgemeine Naturgeschichte (ed. 1798), pp. 118, 119.
[197] Cosmologische Briefe, No. 1 (quoted by Von Zach, Monat. Corr., vol. iii., p. 592).
[198] Second ed., p. 7. See Bode, Von dem neuen Hauptplaneten, p. 43, note.
[199] The representative numbers are obtained by adding 1 to the following series (irregular, it will be observed, in its first member, which should be 1/2 instead of 0); 0, 3, 6, 12, 24, 48, etc. The formula is a purely empirical one, and is, moreover, completely at fault as regards the distance of Neptune.
[200] Monat. Corr., vol. iii., p. 596.
[201] Wolf, Geschichte der Astronomie, p. 648.
[202] Such reversals of direction in the apparent movements of the planets are a consequence of the earth's revolution in its orbit.
[203] Dissertatio Philosophica de Orbitis Planetarum, 1801. See Wolf, Gesch. d. Astr., p. 685.
[204] Observations on Uranus, as a supposed fixed star, went back to 1690.
[205] He had caught a glimpse of it on December 7, but was prevented by bad weather from verifying his suspicion. Monat. Corr., vol. v., p. 171.
[206] Planetary fragments, hurled in any direction, and with any velocity short of that which would for ever release them from the solar sway, would continue to describe elliptic orbits round the sun, all passing through the scene of the explosion, and thus possessing a common line of intersection.
[207] Phil. Trans., vol. xcii., part ii., p. 228.
[208] Ibid., p. 218. In a letter to Von Zach of June 24, 1802, he speaks of Pallas as "almost incredibly small," and makes it only seventy English miles in diameter. Monat. Corr., vol. vi., pp. 89, 90.
[209] Olbers, Monat. Corr., vol. vi., p. 88.
[210] Conn. d. Tems for 1814, p. 218.
[211] Popular Astronomy, p. 327.
[212] Month. Not., vol. vii., p. 299; vol. viii., p. 1.
[213] Ibid., p. 146.
[214] Airy, Mem. R. A. S., vol. xvi., p. 386.
[215] See Newcomb's Pop. Astr., p. 359. The error of Uranus amounted, in 1844, to 2′; but even the tailor of Breslau, whose extraordinary powers of vision Humboldt commemorates (Kosmos, Bd. ii., p. 112), could only see Jupiter's first satellite at its greatest elongation, 2′ 15′. He might, however, possibly have distinguished two objects of equal lustre at a lesser interval.
[216] J. W. L. Glaisher, Observatory, vol. xv., p. 177.
[217] Mem. R. A. S., vol. xvi., p. 399.
[218] For an account of D'Arrest's share in the detection see Copernicus, vol. ii., pp. 63, 96.
[219] Mem. R. A. S., vol. xvi., p. 412.
[220] He had recorded the places of 3,150 stars (three of which were different positions of the planet), and was preparing to map them, when, October 1, news of the discovery arrived from Berlin. Prof. Challis's Report, quoted in Obituary Notice, Month. Not., Feb., 1883, p. 170.
[221] See Airy in Mem. R. A. S., vol. xvi., p. 411.
[222] He died January 21, 1892, in his 71st year.
[223] Ledger, The Sun, its Planets and their Satellites, p. 414.
[224] Presented by the Misses Lassell, after their father's death, to the Greenwich Observatory.
[225] Astr. Jour., No. 508.
[226] Report of U.S. Naval Observatory for 1900, p. 15.
[227] Grant, Hist. of Astr., p. 271.
[228] Month. Not., vol. ix., p. 91.
[229] Month. Not., vol. xi., p. 21.
[230] Astr. Nach., No. 756 (May 2, 1851).
[231] Phil. Trans., vol. i., p. 246. See H. T. Vivian, Engl. Mech., April 20, 1894.
[232] Secchi, Month. Not., vol. xiii., p. 248.
[233] Hind, ibid., vol. xv., p. 32.
[234] Lynn, Observatory, Oct. 1, 1883; Hadley, Phil. Trans., vol. xxxii., p. 385.
[235] Proctor, Saturn and its System, p. 64.
[236] Phil. Trans., vol. lxxvii., p. 125.
[237] Month. Not., vol. xi., p. 248.
[238] Ibid., vol. xxxv., pp. 16-22.
[239] Ibid., p. 26.
[240] Ibid., vol. xli., p. 190.
article by Agnes Mary Clerke
from The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century
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