A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century / Fourth Edition

by Agnes M. Clerke

Thus practical and theoretical astronomy advanced on parallel lines in England and France respectively, the improvement of their several tools—the telescope and the quadrant on the one side, and the calculus on the other—keeping pace. The whole future of the science seemed to be theirs. The cessation of interest through a too speedy attainment of the perfection towards which each spurred the other, appeared to be the only danger it held in store for them. When all at once, a rival stood by their side—not, indeed, menacing their progress, but threatening to absorb their popularity.

The rise of Herschel was the one conspicuous anomaly in the astronomical history of the eighteenth century. It proved decisive of the course of events in the nineteenth. It was unexplained by anything that had gone before; yet all that came after hinged upon it. It gave a new direction to effort; it lent a fresh impulse to thought. It opened a channel for the widespread public interest which was gathering towards astronomical subjects to flow in.

Much of this interest was due to the occurrence of events calculated to arrest the attention and excite the wonder of the uninitiated. The predicted return of Halley's comet in 1759 verified, after an unprecedented fashion, the computations of astronomers. It deprived such bodies for ever of their portentous character; it ranked them as denizens of the solar system. Again, the transits of Venus in 1761 and 1769 were the first occurrences of the kind since the awakening of science to their consequence. Imposing preparations, journeys to remote and hardly accessible regions, official expeditions, international communications, all for the purpose of observing them to the best advantage, brought their high significance vividly to the public consciousness; a result aided by the facile pen of Lalande, in rendering intelligible the means by which these elaborate arrangements were to issue in an accurate knowledge of the sun's distance. Lastly, Herschel's discovery of Uranus, March 13, 1781, had the surprising effect of utter novelty. Since the human race had become acquainted with the company of the planets, no addition had been made to their number. The event thus broke with immemorial traditions, and seemed to show astronomy as still young and full of unlooked-for possibilities.

Further popularity accrued to the science from the sequel of a career so strikingly opened. Herschel's huge telescopes, his detection by their means of two Saturnian and as many Uranian moons, his piercing scrutiny of the sun, picturesque theory of its constitution, and sagacious indication of the route pursued by it through space; his discovery of stellar revolving systems, his bold soundings of the universe, his grandiose ideas, and the elevated yet simple language in which they were conveyed—formed a combination powerfully effective to those least susceptible of new impressions. Nor was the evoked enthusiasm limited to the British Isles. In Germany, Schröter followed—longo intervallo—in Herschel's track. Von Zach set on foot from Gotha that general communication of ideas which gives life to a forward movement. Bode wrote much and well for unlearned readers. Lalande, by his popular lectures and treatises, helped to form an audience which Laplace himself did not disdain to address in the Exposition du Système du Monde.

This great accession of public interest gave the impulse to the extraordinarily rapid progress of astronomy in the nineteenth century. Official patronage combined with individual zeal sufficed for the elder branches of the science. A few well-endowed institutions could accumulate the materials needed by a few isolated thinkers for the construction of theories of wonderful beauty and elaboration, yet precluded, by their abstract nature, from winning general applause. But the new physical astronomy depends for its prosperity upon the favour of the multitude whom its striking results are well fitted to attract. It is, in a special manner, the science of amateurs. It welcomes the most unpretending co-operation. There is no one "with a true eye and a faithful hand" but can do good work in watching the heavens. And not unfrequently, prizes of discovery which the most perfect appliances failed to grasp, have fallen to the share of ignorant or ill-provided assiduity.

Observers, accordingly, have multiplied; observatories have been founded in all parts of the world; associations have been constituted for mutual help and counsel. A formal astronomical congress met in 1789 at Gotha—then, under Duke Ernest II. and Von Zach, the focus of German astronomy—and instituted a combined search for the planet suspected to revolve undiscovered between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The Astronomical Society of London was established in 1820, and the similar German institution in 1863. Both have been highly influential in promoting the interests, local and general, of the science they are devoted to forward; while functions corresponding to theirs have been discharged elsewhere by older or less specially constituted bodies, and new ones of a more popular character are springing up on all sides.

Modern facilities of communication have helped to impress more deeply upon modern astronomy its associative character. The electric telegraph gives a certain ubiquity which is invaluable to an observer of the skies. With the help of a wire, a battery, and a code of signals, he sees whatever is visible from any portion of our globe, depending, however, upon other eyes than his own, and so entering as a unit into a widespread organisation of intelligence. The press, again, has been a potent agent of co-operation. It has mainly contributed to unite astronomers all over the world into a body animated by the single aim of collecting "particulars" in their special branch for what Bacon termed a History of Nature, eventually to be interpreted according to the sagacious insight of some one among them gifted above his fellows. The first really effective astronomical periodical was the Monatliche Correspondenz, started by Von Zach in the year 1800. It was followed in 1822 by the Astronomische Nachrichten, later by the Memoirs and Monthly Notices of the Astronomical Society, and by the host of varied publications which now, in every civilised country, communicate the discoveries made in astronomy to divers classes of readers, and so incalculably quicken the current of its onward flow.

Public favour brings in its train material resources. It is represented by individual enterprise, and finds expression in an ample liberality. The first regular observatory in the Southern Hemisphere was founded at Paramatta by Sir Thomas Makdougall Brisbane in 1821. The Royal Observatory at the Cape of Good Hope was completed in 1829. Similar establishments were set to work by the East India Company at Madras, Bombay, and St. Helena, during the first third of the nineteenth century. The organisation of astronomy in the United States of America was due to a strong wave of popular enthusiasm. In 1825 John Quincy Adams vainly urged upon Congress the foundation of a National Observatory; but in 1843 the lectures on celestial phenomena of Ormsby MacKnight Mitchel stirred an impressionable audience to the pitch of providing him with the means of erecting at Cincinnati the first astronomical establishment worthy the name in that great country. On the 1st of January, 1882, no less than one hundred and forty-four were active within its boundaries.

The apparition of the great comet of 1843 gave an additional fillip to the movement. To the excitement caused by it the Harvard College Observatory—called the "American Pulkowa"—directly owed its origin; and the example was not ineffective elsewhere. The United States Naval Observatory was built in 1844, Lieutenant Maury being its first Director. Corporations, universities, municipalities, vied with each other in the creation of such institutions; private subscriptions poured in; emissaries were sent to Europe to purchase instruments and to procure instruction in their use. In a few years the young Republic was, in point of astronomical efficiency, at least on a level with countries where the science had been fostered since the dawn of civilisation.

A vast widening of the scope of astronomy has accompanied, and in part occasioned, the great extension of its area of cultivation which our age has witnessed. In the last century its purview was a comparatively narrow one. Problems lying beyond the range of the solar system were almost unheeded, because they seemed inscrutable. Herschel first showed the sidereal universe as accessible to investigation, and thereby offered to science new worlds—majestic, manifold, "infinitely infinite" to our apprehension in number, variety, and extent—for future conquest. Their gradual appropriation has absorbed, and will long continue to absorb, the powers which it has served to develop.