At present the Crossley reflector is being used for photographing nebulæ, for which purpose it is very effective. Some nebulæ and clusters, like the great nebula in Andromeda and the Pleiades, are too large for its plate (3¼ × 4¼ in.), but the great majority of nebulæ are very much smaller, having a length of only a few minutes of arc, and a large-scale photograph is required to show them satisfactorily. It is particularly important to have the images of the involved stars as small as they can be made.
Many nebulæ of Herschel’s I and II classes are so bright that fairly good photographs can be obtained with exposures of from one to two hours; but the results obtained with full-light action are so superior to these, that longer exposures of three and one half or four hours are always preferred. In some exceptional cases, exposures of only a few minutes are sufficient. The amount of detail shown, even in the case of very small nebulæ, is surprising. It is an interesting fact that these photographs confirm (in some cases for the first time) many of the visual observations made with the six-foot reflector of the Earl of Rosse.
Incidentally, in making these photographs, great numbers of new nebulæ have been discovered. The largest number that I have found on any one plate is thirty-one. Eight or ten is not an uncommon number, and few photographs have been obtained which do not reveal the existence of three or four. A catalogue of these new objects will be published in due time.
Some of the results obtained with the Crossley reflector, relating chiefly to particular objects of some special interest, have already been published.[11] The photographs have also permitted some wider conclusions to be drawn, which are constantly receiving further confirmation as the work progresses. They may be briefly summarized as follows:
1. Many thousands of unrecorded nebulæ exist in the sky. A conservative estimate places the number within reach of the Crossley reflector at about 120,000. The number of nebulæ in our catalogues is but a small fraction of this.
2. These nebulæ exhibit all gradations of apparent size, from the great nebula in Andromeda down to an object which is hardly distinguishable from a faint star disk.
3. Most of these nebulæ have a spiral structure.
To these conclusions I may add another, of more restricted significance, though the evidence in favor of it is not yet complete. Among the objects which have been photographed with the Crossley telescope are most of the “double” nebulæ figured in Sir John Herschel’s catalogue (Phil. Trans., 1833, Plate XV). The actual nebulæ, as photographed, have almost no resemblance to the figures. They are, in fact, spirals, sometimes of very beautiful and complex structure; and, in any one of the nebulæ, the secondary nucleus of Herschel’s figure is either a part of the spiral approaching the main nucleus in brightness, or it can not be identified with any real part of the object. The significance of this somewhat destructive conclusion lies in the fact that these figures of Herschel have sometimes been regarded as furnishing analogies for the figures which Poincaré had deduced, from theoretical considerations, as being among the possible forms assumed by a rotating fluid mass; in other words, they have been regarded as illustrating an early stage in the development of double star systems. The actual conditions of motion in these particular nebulæ, as indicated by the photographs, are obviously very much more complicated than those considered in the theoretical discussion.
While I must leave to others an estimate of the importance of these conclusions, it seems to me that they have a very direct bearing on many, if not all, questions concerning the cosmogony. If, for example, the spiral is the form normally assumed by a contracting nebulous mass, the idea at once suggests itself that the solar system has been evolved from a spiral nebula, while the photographs show that the spiral nebula is not, as a rule, characterized by the simplicity attributed to the contracting mass in the nebular hypothesis. This is a question which has already been taken up by Professor Chamberlin and Mr. Moulton of the University of Chicago.
The Crossley reflector promises to be useful in a number of fields which are fairly well defined. It is clearly unsuitable for photographing the Moon and planets, and for star charting. On the other hand, it has proved to be of value for finding and photographically observing asteroids whose positions are already approximately known.