A Short History of Astronomy

by Arthur Berry

305. The work of the last 30 or 40 years has established a remarkable relation between comets and the minute bodies which are seen in the form of meteors or shooting stars. Only a few of the more important links in the chain of evidence can, however, be mentioned. Showers of shooting stars, the occurrence of which has been known from quite early times, have been shewn to be due to the passage of the earth through a swarm of bodies revolving in elliptic orbits round the sun. The paths of four such swarms were ascertained with some precision in 1866-67, and found in each case to agree closely with the paths of known comets. And since then a considerable number of other cases of resemblance or identity between the paths of meteor swarms and of comets have been detected. One of the four comets just referred to, known as Biela’s, with a period of between six and seven years, was duly seen on several successive returns, but in 1845-46 was observed first to become somewhat distorted in shape, and afterwards to have divided into two distinct comets; at the next return (1852) the pair were again seen; but since then nothing has been seen of either portion. At the end of November in each year the earth almost crosses the path of this comet, and on two occasions (1872, and 1885) it did so nearly at the time when the comet was due at the same spot; if, as seemed likely, the comet had gone to pieces since its last appearance, there seemed a good chance of falling in with some of its remains, and this expectation was fulfilled by the occurrence on both occasions of a meteor shower much more brilliant than that usually observed at the same date.

Biela’s comet is not the only comet which has shewn signs of breaking up; Brooks’s comet of 1889, which is probably identical with Lexell’s (chapter XI., [§ 248]), was found to be accompanied by three smaller companions; as this comet has more than once passed extremely close to Jupiter, a plausible explanation of its breaking up is at once given in the attractive force of the planet. Moreover certain systems of comets, the members of which revolve in the same orbit but separated by considerable intervals of time, have also been discovered. Tebbutt’s comet of 1881 moves in practically the same path as one seen in 1807, and the great comet of 1880, the great comet of 1882 (shewn in fig. 99), and a third which appeared in 1887, all move in paths closely resembling that of the comet of 1843, while that of 1668 is more doubtfully connected with the same system. And it is difficult to avoid regarding the members of a system as fragments of an earlier comet, which has passed through the stages in which we have actually seen the comets of Biela and Brooks.

Evidence of such different kinds points to an intimate connection between comets and meteors, though it is perhaps still premature to state confidently that meteors are fragments of decayed comets, or that conversely comets are swarms of meteors.

306. Each of the great problems of sidereal astronomy which Herschel formulated and attempted to solve has been elaborately studied by the astronomers of the 19th century. The multiplication of observatories, improvements in telescopes, and the introduction of photography—to mention only three obvious factors of progress—have added enormously to the extent and accuracy of our knowledge of the stars, while the invention of spectrum analysis has thrown an entirely new light on several important problems.

William Herschel’s most direct successor was his son John Frederick William (1792-1871), who was not only an astronomer, but also made contributions of importance to pure mathematics, to physics, to the nascent art of photography, and to the philosophy of scientific discovery. He began his astronomical career about 1816 by re-measuring, first alone, then in conjunction with James South (1785-1867), a number of his father’s double stars. The first result of this work was a catalogue, with detailed measurements, of some hundred double and multiple stars (published in 1824), which formed a valuable third term of comparison with his father’s observations of 1781-82 and 1802-03, and confirmed in several cases the slow motions of revolution the beginnings of which had been observed before. A great survey of nebulae followed, resulting in a catalogue (1833) of about 2500, of which some 500 were new and 2000 were his father’s, a few being due to other observers; incidentally more than 3000 pairs of stars close enough together to be worth recording as double stars were observed.

Fig. 100.—The nebula about η Argus.

[To face p. 397.

307. Then followed his well-known expedition to the Cape of Good Hope (1833-1838), where he “swept” the southern skies in very much the same way in which his father had explored the regions visible in our latitude. Some 1200 double and multiple stars, and a rather larger number of new nebulae, were discovered and studied, while about 500 known nebulae were re-observed; star-gauging on William Herschel’s lines was also carried out on an extensive scale. A number of special observations of interest were made almost incidentally during this survey: the remarkable variable star η Argus and the nebula surrounding it (a modern photograph of which is reproduced in fig. 100), the wonderful collections of nebulae clusters and stars, known as the Nubeculae or Magellanic Clouds, and Halley’s comet were studied in turn; and the two faintest satellites of Saturn then known (chapter XII., [§ 255]) were seen again for the first time since the death of their discoverer.