The story of the sun, moon, and stars . atory at Slough surpassed in celebrity the prin-cipal observatories of Europe; we may say that, inthe whole world, this is the place where the most dis-coveries have been made. Astronomers soon applied themselves to the ob-servation of the new body. They supposed that thiscomet would describe, as usually happens, a veryelongated ellipse, and that it would approach consid-erably to the sun at its perihelion. But all the calcu-lations made on this supposition had to be constantlyrecommenced. They could never succeed in represent-ing all its positions, alth
The story of the sun, moon, and stars . atory at Slough surpassed in celebrity the prin-cipal observatories of Europe; we may say that, inthe whole world, this is the place where the most dis-coveries have been made. Astronomers soon applied themselves to the ob-servation of the new body. They supposed that thiscomet would describe, as usually happens, a veryelongated ellipse, and that it would approach consid-erably to the sun at its perihelion. But all the calcu-lations made on this supposition had to be constantlyrecommenced. They could never succeed in represent-ing all its positions, although the star moved veryslowly: the observations of one month would utterlyupset the calculations of the preceding month. Several months elapsed without a suspicion that averitable planet was under observation, and it was nottill after recognizing that all the imaginary orbits forthe supposed comet were contradicted by the observa-tions, and that it had probably a circular orbit muchfarther from the sun than Saturn, till then the fron-. Prominent Astronomers of Former Times. 228 STORY OF THE SUN, MOON, AND STARS. tier of the system, that astronomers came to considerit as a planet. Still, this was at first bnt a provisionalconsent. It was, in fact, more difficult than we may think toincrease without scruple the family of the sun. In-deed, for reasons of expediency this idea was op-posed. Ancient ideas are tyrannical. Men had solong been accustomed to consider old Saturn as theguardian of the frontiers, that it required a rare bold-ness of spirit to decide on extending these frontiersand marking them by a new world. William Herschel proposed the name of GeorgiumSidus the Star of George, just as Galileo had giventhe name of Medicean stars to the satellites of Ju-piter discovered by him, and as Horace had said JuliumSidus. Others proposed the name of Neptune, inorder to maintain the mythological character, and togive to the new body the trident of the English mari-time power; other
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, bookidstor, booksubjectastronomy
