Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art
Various
Various
Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art
MOUNTAIN OBSERVATORIES
On October 1st, 1876, one of the millionaires of the New World died at San Francisco. Although owning a no more euphonious name than James Lick, he had contrived to secure a future for it. He had founded and endowed the first great astronomical establishment planted on the heights, between the stars and the sea. How he came by his love of science we have no means of knowing. Born obscurely at Fredericksburg, in Pennsylvania, August 25th, 1796, he amassed some 30,000 dollars by commerce in South America, and in 1847 transferred them and himself to a village which had just exchanged its name of Yerba Buena for that of San Francisco, situate on a long, sandy strip of land between the Pacific and a great bay. In the hillocks and gullies of that wind-blown barrier he invested his dollars, and never did virgin soil yield a richer harvest. The gold-fever broke out in the spring of 1848. The unremembered cluster of wooden houses, with no trouble or tumult of population in their midst, nestling round a tranquil creek under a climate which, but for a touch of sea-fog, might rival that of the Garden of the Hesperides, became all at once a centre of attraction to the outcast and adventurous from every part of the world. Wealth poured in; trade sprang up; a population of six hundred increased to a quarter of a million; hotels, villas, public edifices, places of business spread, mile after mile, along the bay; building-ground rose to a fabulous price, and James Lick found himself one of the richest men in the United States.
Thus he got his money; we have now to see how he spent it. Already the munificent benefactor of the learned institutions of California, he in 1874 formally set aside a sum of two million dollars for various public purposes, philanthropic, patriotic, and scientific. Of these two millions 700,000 were appropriated to the erection of a telescope “superior to, and more powerful than any ever yet made.” But this, he felt instinctively, was not enough. Even in astronomy, although most likely unable to distinguish the Pole-star from the Dog-star, this “pioneer citizen” could read the signs of the times. It was no longer instruments that were wanted; it was the opportunity of employing them. Telescopes of vast power and exquisite perfection had ceased to be a rarity; but their use seemed all but hopelessly impeded by the very conditions of existence on the surface of the earth.
The air we breathe is in truth the worst enemy of the astronomer’s observations. It is their enemy in two ways. Part of the sight which brings its wonderful, evanescent messages across inconceivable depths of space, it stops; and what it does not stop, it shatters. And this even when it is most transparent and seemingly still; when mist-veils are withdrawn, and no clouds curtain the sky. Moreover, the evil grows with the power of the instrument. Atmospheric troubles are magnified neither more nor less than the objects viewed across them. Thus, Lord Rosse’s giant reflector possesses —nominally– a magnifying power of 6,000; that is to say, it can reduce the apparent distances of the heavenly bodies to 1/6000 their actual amount. The moon, for example, which is in reality separated from the earth’s surface by an interval of about 234,000 miles, is shown as if removed only thirty-nine miles. Unfortunately, however, in theory only. Professor Newcomb compares the sight obtained under such circumstances to a glimpse through several yards of running water, and doubts whether our satellite has ever been seen to such advantage as it would be if brought – substantially, not merely optically – within 500 miles of the unassisted eye.[1 - Popular Astronomy, p. 145.]
Must, then, all the growing triumphs of the optician’s skill be counteracted by this plague of moving air? Can nothing be done to get rid of, or render it less obnoxious? Or is this an