Fig. 99.—A chart of Mars, 1898-'99.—Cerulli.
155. Satellites.—In 1877, one of the times of near approach, Professor Hall, of Washington, discovered two tiny satellites revolving about Mars in orbits so small that the nearer one, Phobos, presents the remarkable anomaly of completing the circuit of its orbit in less time than the planet takes for a rotation about its axis. This satellite, in fact, makes three revolutions in its orbit while the planet turns once upon its axis, and it therefore rises in the west and sets in the east, as seen from Mars, going from one horizon to the other in a little less than 6 hours. The other satellite, Deimos, takes a few hours more than a day to make the circuit of its orbit, but the difference is so small that it remains continuously above the horizon of any given place upon Mars for more than 60 hours at a time, and during this period runs twice through its complete set of phases—new, first quarter, full, etc. In ordinary telescopes these satellites can be seen only under especially favorable circumstances, and are far too small to permit of any direct measurement of their size. The amount of light which they reflect has been compared with that of Mars and found to be as much inferior to it as is Polaris to two full moons, and, judging from this comparison, their diameters can not much exceed a half dozen miles, unless their albedo is far less than that of Mars, which does not seem probable.
The Asteroids
156. Minor planets.—These may be dismissed with few words. There are about 500 of them known, all discovered since the beginning of the nineteenth century, and new ones are still found every year. No one pretends to remember the names which have been assigned them, and they are commonly represented by a number inclosed in a circle, showing the order in which they were discovered—e. g., ➀ = Ceres, [circle 433] = Eros, etc. For the most part they are little more than chips, world fragments, adrift in space, and naturally it was the larger and brighter of them that were first discovered. The size of the first four of them—Ceres, Pallas, Juno, and Vesta—compared with the size of the moon, according to Professor Barnard, is shown in [Fig. 100]. The great majority of them must be much smaller than the smallest of these, perhaps not more than a score of miles in diameter.
A few of the asteroids present problems of special interest, such as Eros, on account of its close approach to the earth; Polyhymnia, whose very eccentric orbit makes it a valuable means for determining the mass of Jupiter, etc.; but these are special cases and the average asteroid now receives scant attention, although half a century ago, when only a few of them were known, they were regarded with much interest, and the discovery of a new one was an event of some consequence.
It was then a favorite speculation that they were in fact fragments of an ill-fated planet which once filled the gap between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, but which, by some mischance, had been blown into pieces. This is now known to be well-nigh impossible, for every fragment which after the explosion moved in an elliptical orbit, as all the asteroids do move, would be brought back once in every revolution to the place of the explosion, and all the asteroid orbits must therefore intersect at this place. But there is no such common point of intersection.
