C. Herschel.
1836. Southern Stars.
SIR JOHN HERSCHEL TO MISS HERSCHEL.
March 8, 1836.
Dear Aunt,—
Maggie desires me to finish this for her, but she has not left me room to write at length. So I will only devote this space to one point in your last letter which requires reply. I have not got Gauss’s apparatus, and I am not sufficiently acquainted with his method of observing to construct one for myself. Besides which it is quite out of my power to undertake any extensive series of observations, being anxious to get home, and having still so much to do, both in observation and reduction, that I really shall hardly be able to accomplish all I have already in hand. This comet [Halley’s] has been a great interruption to my sweeps, and I hope and fear it may yet be visible another month. Unluckily when I sailed from England I left all my volumes of Poggendorff and the Nachrichten behind me, and none of the former and very few of the latter have reached me here. I fear it is now too late to send home for anything, and I have two series of observations, viz., of the comparative brightness of the southern stars, and of the photometric estimation of their magnitudes—the former just commencing, the latter not yet begun, which I must do. Pray explain this to Gauss.... Astronomical news I have little, but one thing very remarkable I must tell you, γ Virginis is now a single star in both the twenty-foot and the seven-foot equatorial!!!
Your affectionate nephew,
J. F. W. Herschel.
MISS HERSCHEL TO SIR J. F. W. HERSCHEL.
Hanover, June 29, 1836.