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

by Agnes M. Clerke

This same lens (12 inches across) was afterwards purchased by Sir James South, and the first observation made with it, February 13, 1830, disclosed to Sir John Herschel the sixth minute star in the central group of the Orion nebula, known as the "trapezium."[315] Bequeathed by South to Trinity College, Dublin, it was employed at the Dunsink Observatory by Brünnow and Ball in their investigations of stellar parallax. A still larger objective (of nearly 14 inches) made of Guinand's glass was secured in Paris, about the same time, by Mr. Edward Cooper of Markree Castle, Ireland. The peculiarity of the method discovered at Les Brenets resided in the manipulation, not in the quality of the ingredients; the secret, that is to say, was not chemical, but mechanical.[316] It was communicated by Henry Guinand (a son of the inventor) to Bontemps, one of the directors of the glassworks at Choisy-le-Roi, and by him transmitted to Messrs. Chance of Birmingham, with whom he entered into partnership when the revolutionary troubles of 1848 obliged him to quit his native country. The celebrated American opticians, Alvan Clark & Sons, derived from the Birmingham firm the materials for some of their early telescopes, notably the 19-inch Chicago and 26-inch Washington equatoreals; but the discs for the great Lick refractor, and others shaped by them in recent years, have been supplied by Feil of Paris.

Two distinguished amateurs, meanwhile, were preparing to reassert on behalf of reflecting instruments their claim to the place of honour in the van of astronomical discovery. Of Mr. Lassell's specula something has already been said.[317] They were composed of an alloy of copper and tin, with a minute proportion of arsenic (after the example of Newton[318]), and were remarkable for perfection of figure and brilliancy of surface.

The capabilities of the Newtonian plan were developed still more fully—it might almost be said to the uttermost—by the enterprise of an Irish nobleman. William Parsons, known as Lord Oxmantown until 1841, when, on his father's death, he succeeded to the title of Earl of Rosse, was born at York, June 17, 1800. His public duties began before his education was completed. He was returned to Parliament as member for King's County while still an undergraduate at Oxford, and continued to represent the same constituency for thirteen years (1821-34). From 1845 until his death, which took place, October 31, 1867, he sat, silent but assiduous, in the House of Lords as an Irish representative peer; he held the not unlaborious post of President of the Royal Society from 1849 to 1854; presided over the meeting of the British Association at Cork in 1843, and was elected Vice-Chancellor of Dublin University in 1862. In addition to these extensive demands upon his time and thoughts, were those derived from his position as practically the feudal chief of a large body of tenantry in times of great and anxious responsibility, to say nothing of the more genial claims of an unstinted hospitality. Yet, while neglecting no public or private duty, this model nobleman found leisure to render to science services so conspicuous as to entitle his name to a lasting place in its annals. He early formed the design of reaching the limits of the attainable in enlarging the powers of the telescope, and the qualities of his mind conspired with the circumstances of his fortune to render the design a feasible one. From refractors it was obvious that no such vast and rapid advance could be expected. English glass-manufacture was still in a backward state. So late as 1839, Simms (successor to the distinguished instrumentalist Edward Troughton) reported a specimen of crystal scarcely 7-1/2 inches in diameter, and perfect only over six, to be unique in the history of English glass-making.[319] Yet at that time the fifteen-inch achromatic of Pulkowa had already left the workshop of Fraunhofer's successors at Munich. It was not indeed until 1845, when the impost which had so long hampered their efforts was removed, that the optical artists of these islands were able to compete on equal terms with their rivals on the Continent. In the case of reflectors, however, there seemed no insurmountable obstacle to an almost unlimited increase of light-gathering capacity; and it was here, after some unproductive experiments with fluid lenses, that Lord Oxmantown concentrated his energies.

He had to rely entirely on his own invention, and to earn his own experience. James Short had solved the problem of giving to metallic surfaces a perfect parabolic figure (the only one by which parallel incident rays can be brought to an exact focus); but so jealous was he of his secret, that he caused all his tools to be burnt before his death;[320] nor was anything known of the processes by which Herschel had achieved his astonishing results. Moreover, Lord Oxmantown had no skilled workmen to assist him. His implements, both animate and inanimate, had to be formed by himself. Peasants taken from the plough were educated by him into efficient mechanics and engineers. The delicate and complex machinery needed in operations of such hairbreadth nicety as his enterprise involved, the steam-engine which was to set it in motion, at times the very crucibles in which his specula were cast, issued from his own workshops.

In 1827 experiments on the composition of speculum-metal were set on foot, and the first polishing-machine ever driven by steam-power was contrived in 1828. But twelve arduous years of struggle with recurring difficulties passed before success began to dawn. A material less tractable than the alloy selected, of four chemical equivalents of copper to one of tin,[321] can scarcely be conceived. It is harder than steel, yet brittle as glass, crumbling into fragments with the slightest inadvertence of handling or treatment;[322] and the precision of figure requisite to secure good definition is almost beyond the power of language to convey. The quantities involved are so small as not alone to elude sight, but to confound imagination. Sir John Herschel tells us that "the total thickness to be abraded from the edge of a spherical speculum 48 inches in diameter and 40 feet focus, to convert it into a paraboloid, is only 1/21333 of an inch;"[323] yet upon this minute difference of form depends the clearness of the image, and, as a consequence, the entire efficiency of the instrument. "Almost infinite," indeed (in the phrase of the late Dr. Robinson), must be the exactitude of the operation adapted to bring about so delicate a result.

At length, in 1839, two specula, each three feet in diameter, were turned out in such perfection as to prompt a still bolder experiment. The various processes needed to insure success were now ascertained and under control; all that was necessary was to repeat them on a larger scale. A gigantic mirror, six feet across and fifty-four in focal length, was accordingly cast on the 13th of April, 1842; in two months it was ground down to figure by abrasion with emery and water, and daintily polished with rouge; and by the month of February, 1845, the "leviathan of Parsonstown" was available for the examination of the heavens.

The suitable mounting of this vast machine was a problem scarcely less difficult than its construction. The shape of a speculum needs to be maintained with an elaborate care equal to that used in imparting it. In fact, one of the most formidable obstacles to increasing the size of such reflecting surfaces consists in their liability to bend under their own weight. That of the great Rosse speculum was no less than four tons. Yet, although six inches in thickness, and composed of a material only a degree inferior in rigidity to wrought iron, the strong pressure of a man's hand at its back produced sufficient flexure to distort perceptibly the image of a star reflected in it.[324] Thus the delicacy of its form was perishable equally by the stress of its own gravity, and by the slightest irregularity in the means taken to counteract that stress. The problem of affording a perfectly equable support in all possible positions was solved by resting the speculum upon twenty-seven platforms of cast iron, felt-covered, and carefully fitted to the shape of the areas they were to carry, which platforms were themselves borne by a complex system of triangles and levers, ingeniously adapted to distribute the weight with complete uniformity.[325]

A tube which resembled, when erect, one of the ancient round towers of Ireland,[326] served as the habitation of the great mirror. It was constructed of deal staves bound together with iron hoops, was fifty-eight feet long (including the speculum-box), and seven in diameter. A reasonably tall man may walk through it (as Dean Peacock once did) with umbrella uplifted. Two piers of solid masonry, about fifty feet high, seventy long, and twenty-three apart, flanked the huge engine on either side. Its lower extremity rested on a universal joint of cast iron; above, it was slung in chains, and even in a gale of wind remained perfectly steady. The weight of the entire, although amounting to fifteen tons, was so skilfully counterpoised, that the tube could with ease be raised or depressed by two men working a windlass. Its horizontal range was limited by the lofty walls erected for its support to about ten degrees on each side of the meridian; but it moved vertically from near the horizon through the zenith as far as the pole. Its construction was of the Newtonian kind, the observer looking into the side of the tube near its upper end, which a series of galleries and sliding stages enabled him to reach in any position. It has also, though rarely, been used without a second mirror, as a "Herschelian" reflector.

The splendour of the celestial objects as viewed with this vast "light-grasper" surpassed all expectation. "Never in my life," exclaimed Sir James South, "did I see such glorious sidereal pictures."[327] The orb of Jupiter produced an effect compared to that of the introduction of a coach-lamp into the telescope;[328] and certain star-clusters exhibited an appearance (we again quote Sir James South) "such as man before had never seen, and which for its magnificence baffles all description." But it was in the examination of the nebulæ that the superiority of the new instrument was most strikingly displayed. A large number of these misty objects, which the utmost powers of Herschel's specula had failed to resolve into stars, yielded at once to the Parsonstown reflector; while many others showed under entirely changed forms through the disclosure of previously unseen details of structure.

One extremely curious result of the increase of light was the abolition of any sharp distinction between the two classes of "annular" and "planetary" nebulæ. Up to that time, only four ring-shaped systems—two in the northern and two in the southern hemisphere—were known to astronomers; they were now reinforced by five of the planetary kind, the discs of which were observed to be centrally perforated; while the definite margins visible in weaker instruments were replaced by ragged edges or filamentous fringes.