Astronomy for Amateurs by Camille Flammarion (mini ebook reader .TXT) 📕

The most curious fact is that these satellites do not rotate like those of the other planets. While the moons of the Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn accomplish their revolution from east to west, the satellites of Uranus rotate in a plane almost perpendicular to the ecliptic, and it is doubtless the same for the rotation of the planet.

If we had to quit the Earth, and fixate ourselves upon another world, we should prefer Mars to Uranus, where everything must be so different from terrestrial arrangements? But who knows? Perhaps, after all, this planet might afford us some agreeable surprises. Il ne faut jurer de rien.

NEPTUNE

And here we reach the frontier of the Solar System, as actually known to us. In landing on the world of Neptune, which circles through the Heavens in eternal twilight at a distance of more than four milliard kilometers (2,480,000,000 miles) from the common center of attraction of the planetary orbs, we once again admire the prodigies of science.

Uranus was discovered with the telescope, Neptune by calculation. In addition to the solar influence, the worlds exert a mutual attraction upon each other that slightly deranges the harmony ordered by the Sun. The stronger act upon the weaker, and the colossal Jupiter alone causes many of the perturbations in our great solar family. Now during regular observations of the position of Uranus in space, some inexplicable irregularities were soon perceived. The astronomers having full faith in the universality of the law of attraction, could not do otherwise than attribute these irregularities to the influence of some unknown planet situated even farther off. But at what distance?

A very simple proportion, known as Bode's law, has been observed, which indicates approximately the relative distances of the planets from the Sun. It is as follows: Starting from 0, write the number 3, and double successively,

0  3  6  12  24  48  96  192  384.

Then, add the number 4 to each of the preceding figures, which gives the following series:

4  7  10  16  28  52  100  196  388.

Now it is a very curious fact that if the distance between the Earth and the Sun be represented by 10, the figure 4 represents the orbit of Mercury, 7 that of Venus, 16 of Mars; the figure 28 stands for the medium distance of the minor planets; the distances of Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus agree with 52, 100, and 196.

The immortal French mathematician Le Verrier, who pursued the solution of the Uranian problem, supposed naturally that the disturbing planet must be at the distance of 388, and made his calculations accordingly. Its direction in the Heavens was indicated by the form of the disturbances; the orbit of Uranus bulging, as it were, on the side of the disturbing factor.

On August 31, 1846, Le Verrier announced the position of the ultra-Uranian planet, and on September 23d following, a German astronomer, Galle, at the Observatory of Berlin, who had just received this intelligence, pointed his telescope toward the quarter of the Heavens designated, and, in fact, attested the presence of the new orb. Without quitting his study table, Le Verrier, by the sole use of mathematics, had detected, and, as it were, touched at pen's point the mysterious stranger.

Only, it is proved by observation and calculation that it is less remote than was expected from the preceding law, for it gravitates at a distance of 300, given that from the Earth to the Sun as 10.

This planet was called Neptune, god of the seas, son of Saturn, brother of Jupiter. The name is well chosen, since the King of the Ocean lives in darkness in the depths of the sea, and Le Verrier's orb is also plunged in the semi-obscurity of the depths of the celestial element. But it was primarily selected to do justice to an English astronomer, Adams, who had simultaneously made the same calculations as Le Verrier, and obtained the same results—without publishing them. His work remained in the records of the Greenwich Observatory.

The English command the seas, and wherever they dip their finger into the water and find it salt, they feel themselves "at home," and know that "Neptune's trident is the scepter of the world," hence this complimentary nomenclature.

Neptune is separated by a distance of four milliards, four hundred million kilometers from the solar center.

At such a distance, thirty times greater than that which exists between the Sun and our world, Neptune receives nine hundred times less light and heat than ourselves; i.e., Spitzbergen and the polar regions of our globe are furnaces compared with what must be the Neptunian temperature. Absolutely invisible to the unaided eye, this world presents in the telescope the aspect of a star of the eighth magnitude. With powerful magnifications it is possible to measure its disk, which appears to be slightly tinged with blue. Its diameter is four times larger than our own, and measures about 48,000 kilometers (29,900 miles), its surface is sixteen times vaster than that of the Earth, and to attain its volume we should have to put together fifty-five globes similar to our own. Weight at its surface must be about the same as here, but its medium density is only 1⁄3 that of the Earth.

It gravitates slowly, dragging itself along an orbit thirty times vaster than that of our globe, and its revolution takes 164 years, 281 days, i.e., 164 years, 9 months. A single year of Neptune thus covers several generations of terrestrial life. Existence must, indeed, be strange in that tortoise-footed world!

While in their rotation period, Mercury accomplishes 47 kilometers (293⁄8 miles) per second, and the Earth 291⁄2 (181⁄8 miles), Neptune rolls along his immense orbit at a rate of only 51⁄2 kilometers (about 31⁄4 miles) per second.

The vast distance that separates us prevents our distinguishing any details of his surface, but spectral analysis reveals the presence of an absorbent atmosphere in which are gases unknown to the air of our planet, and of which the chemical composition resembles that of the atmosphere of Uranus.

One satellite has been discovered for Neptune. It has a considerable inclination, and rotates from east to west.

And here we have reached the goal of our interplanetary journey. After visiting the vast provinces of the solar republic, we feel yet greater admiration and gratitude toward the luminary that governs, warms, and illuminates the worlds of his system.

In conclusion, let us again insist that the Earth,—a splendid orb as viewed from Mercury, Venus, and Mars,—begins to disappear from Jupiter, where she becomes no more than a tiny spark oscillating from side to side of the Sun, and occasionally passing in front of him as a small black dot. From Saturn the visibility of our planet is even more reduced. As to Uranus and Neptune, we are invisible there, at least to eyes constructed like our own. We do not possess in the Universe the importance with which we would endow ourselves.

Neptune up to the present guards the portals of our celestial system; we will leave him to watch over the distant frontier; but before returning to the Earth, we must glance at certain eccentric orbs, at the mad, capricious comets, which imprint their airy flight upon the realms of space.

Shooting Stars, Bolides, Uranoliths or Meteoric Stones

What marvels have been reviewed by our dazzled eyes since the outset of these discussions! We first surveyed the magnificent host of stars that people the vast firmament of Heaven; next we admired and wondered at suns very differently constituted from our own; then returning from the depths of space, crossing at a bound the abyss that separates us from these mysterious luminaries, the distant torches of our somber night, terrible suns of infinity, we landed on our own beloved orb, the superb and brilliant day-star. Thence we visited his celestial family, his system, in which our Earth is a floating island. But the journey would be incomplete if we omitted certain more or less vagabond orbs, that occasionally approach the Sun and Earth, some of which may even collide with us upon their celestial path. These are in the first place the comets, then the shooting stars, the fire-balls, and meteorites.

Glittering, swift-footed heralds of Immensity, these comets with golden wings glide lightly through Space, shedding a momentary illumination by their presence. Whence come they? Whither are they bound?

What problems they propound to us, when, as in some beautiful display of pyrotechnics, the arch of Heaven is illuminated with their fantastic light!

But first of all—what is a Comet?

If instead of living in these days of the telescope, of spectrum analysis, and of astral photography, we were anterior to Galileo, and to the liberation of the human spirit by Astronomy, we should reply that the comet is an object of terror, a dangerous menace that appears to mortals in the purity of the immaculate Heavens, to announce the most fatal misfortunes to the inhabitants of our planet. Is a comet visible in the Heavens? The reigning prince may make his testament and prepare to die. Another apparition in the firmament bodes war, famine, the advent of grievous pestilence. The astrologers had an open field, and their fertile imagination might hazard every possible conjecture, seeing that misfortunes, great or small, are not altogether rare in this sublunar world.

How many intellects, and those not the most vulgar, from antiquity to the middle of the last century cursed the apparition of these hirsute stars, which brought desolation to the heart of man, and poured their fatal effluvia upon the head of poor Humanity. The history of the superstitions and fears that they inspired of old would furnish matter for the most thrilling of romances. But, on the other hand, the volume would be little flattering to the common-sense of our ancestors. Despite the respect we owe our forefathers, let us recall for a moment the prejudices attaching to the most famous comets whose passage, as observed from the Earth, has been preserved to us in history.