IN STARRY SKIES

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 133, 9 June 1927, Page 19

IN STARRY SKIES

R. A. PROCTOR'S WORK

ASTRONOMY FOB THE

PEOPLE

(By "Omega Cenlauri.")

The lour years from 1856 to 1870 were, as we have seen, the critical years in Proctor's scientific career. During thorn he adjusted Jus endeavours to suit new and less favourable conditions. Ho had started his astronomical work without any thought of the public. Ho did not, as is sometimes supposed, deliberately set out to enlighten the world. Ho was forced later by financial necessity to strive to interest the people, or olse to abandon his scientific work. Ho had already found that there waa no demand for his serious technical works. He could only ..get them published by bearing the expense. Whoa faced suddenly with ;.tha. .urgent, problem o£. Vbuildijig his slj/itterejl fortunes, he, worked incessantly, and, by making his writings simpler and 'more poguku;, gradually found au au,OJonce. . It; was, not easy. Publishers naturally hesitato to accept' contributions for their-journals from an, r unknown man. ■vyJiea Ptoctor sent an article on. the G,ulf Stream, to "St. Paul's Magazine," ! Anthony l'rollope, whilst acknowladgin" its mtnnsjc interest, would; not accept it without evidence. that, the author was competent to deal with such a scibntific subject. Intimately, however, the article appeared. Proctor had anr unusual wealth or most interesting knowiedgo to impart and he soon learned that what the public want is clearness and simplicity of expression and the avoidance o£ all unnecessary technicalities. Bringing great truths within the comprehension of thpse, who have, not studied tha subject before has some unexpected rewards. Proctor, discovered that his endeavour to present each, thepry. cogently and clearly afforded a severe test of. its accuracy. Any-pact* which failed to stand tUi"or- ßdeal had 6i&m to suifebly, njftdified or else ruthlessly abandoned. The^ publication of "Other Worlds than Ours" in 1870 marked the next change m Proctor's fortunes. It showed him how to maintain his family without giving up the scientific work on which his heart was set. The first of these purposes he fulfilled by writing the most notable series of popular books on astronomy that, has ever appeared. The second was achieved at the same time by his heroic persistence and indefatigable energy. Let us give one instance of the way he went to work. He wanted to see whether the brighter stars, down to the tenth magnitude were more abundant in the direction of tho Milky Way than in other parts of the heavens. To do this he plotted on a single chart the. whole of the 324108 'stars given in Argelander's Durchmusterung. This task took him 400 hours, although he wa<». very expert in mapdravnug and projection, and was thus able to work astonishingly fast. He was much amused by his daughter then^a very little girl, offering to help, fehe had.no idea that it,matterea much where each, little dot was placed. The finished chart proved that it was possible to trace the Milky Way with all its main branches and convolutions by studying only the brighter stars, down to the eleventh magnitude. Another piece of work done by Proctor about this time was the determination of the rotation period of Mars. Using a drawing made by Hooke on 13th March, 1666, and others made by Browning in 1867 and 1869, ho calculated the rotation period to be 24 hours 37 minutes 22.735 seconds. Later he corrected the seconds to 22.72. Professor Kayser of Loyden' disputed the correctness'of the decimal of a'sccond, saying that it ought to be 22 6 instead of 22.7. Proctor worked through Kayser's statement, which covers 32 quarto pages in German, and found that he had apparently counted 1700 and 1800 as leap years. This completely accounted for the difference of one-tenth of a second. Such researches wn-.j to Proctor a labour of love, whilst by means of his popular writings ho was regaining his independence. By 1872 his financial position was so far restored that he i'elt able to accept the position of ono of the honorary secretaries of tho Boyal Astronomical Society. He heia this position until November, 1873, when he resigned it in order to go on a lecturing tour in America." During tho time he was secretary ho contributed 83 papers to the monthly notices. Amongst them-were papers on Star Distribution, Tho Construction of the Milky Way, The Distribution of the Nebulae, Tho Proper Motions of tho Stars, and The Transits of Venus. Tho yearly volume was tho largest on. record, and moro than half of it was written by himself. During 1872, in addition to all this work for the socioty, ho published "The Orbs Around Us" ana "Essays on Astronomy. ?' Proctor considered afterwards that ho had made a mistake in undertaking work for the society. He regrettod the perturbing influence on his own course of tho turmoils which vexed its peace, and he was glad to escape from an atmosphere of controversy and dispute. It was a relief also to be free from exacting routine duties. Some'ill-feeling had been aroused by Proctor's work on The Transits of Venus. He had noticed that somo mistakes had been made in tho official calculations, and wrote privately to Sir G. B. Airy, Astronomer Royal. After waitng two years and getting no reply, ho felt it his duty to make his results public, for he had done an astonishing amount of laborious work in reaching his conclusions. He published maps indicating the times of ingress and egress for all points on the earth and a tea times closer approximation to accuracy than can be attained for a single place by using the recognised formula given in Chauvenet's Practical and Theoretical Astronomy. He wanted further work done in preparation for the transits of 1873 and 1882. He failed to secure the co-opera-tion of the English official astronomers, but the work he asked for was done at tho last moment in America. Unfortunately Airy did not take this kindly. He was, as Proctor states, "usually one of the hardest working and most trustworthy of our Government astronomers." But his action in this case appears lacking in generosity. .When it was proposed and carried oy the council of the" 8.A.8. to .present to Mr. Proctor the socioty's medal for this and other work Airy wrote deprecating the confirmation of the award. In the autumn of 1873, with Mr. .Wilkie Collins, Proctor called ok Dr. i Phver Wendell Holmes, and received great encouragement from this great and genial humorist. After telling Wilkie Collins that he made a point of reading one novel a year, never less but also never more, Holmes turned to Iroctor and said, "I found you out years ago." Whilst Proctor was wondering what iniquity he had discovered, Holmes added, "I found you out as a student of astronomy who has something of his own to say and means to say it, and to show that it is worth listening to." . A year before this interview Holmes had written "The Poet at the Breakfast Table" with a young astronomer for hero, whoso thoughts on science and philosophy agreed with all that Proctor wrote and felt. In 1873, whilst giving a long course of lectures,, he published three now books, "The Expanse of Heaven," Ihe Moon," and "The Borderland of Science." In tho first of these he gave amongst many other things, his s*«»se.a* io the t>tisin ai f^ r^4h*'^-

lv CWy m bv eaatlo Ptcd and supported theorvT P k"- .A, CCOrdin ß *» this Tul't It ■ glSnt planets arc the parCorninl A "Tho Universe and the 1875 ?Onr SS ltS "PPeared, and in Th G vn-Tr* i£« Cc Amongst Infinities." ones ffl, 18™ and 1881 were «« °"V d?d not n , &- O1, ghteon y«««i in which he work P 'H 5U '?■ least ono' new POPUI" roadinrr T?- b°°kß are worth reson enf it * 1S "fc^ing how vividly 17 in 4, "S?" 11 Pr<>blenis are statun nl^Z" The ««« even will call fevJd \Z i T moriea in thoso wh° enod ««&vn? k'"-*i ien th^ flrst aPPear" omv " "Th» S a T n T d.Mar^ of Astron- <<,?>' -he Universe of Stars" "Mower. , O f the Sky," "The Poetry Pyramid," «Th o Universe of Suns " n.,r« '» ? ns* "other Suns Than sf,;V"n aml "? aIf"Hours With the fctars, appeared rapidly in that order Proctor 'g g reat work on •' Old and New Astronomy," whlchhe hi % gtfZ ■timt'oH- llS t ?, Uito in 1592 c- Eangard, and published •i S frmmmV- aS<!!j,C author o£ articles on tinn^M 7 IDi 'Thß Encyclopaedia BriVvEK *?,* m "Tho American En- &" „I" 1881 he founded to«sets WaS Wman o£ »»us^lly wide inHiY*ri? Pian° expression. ? 8S ere not confined to asnonucal.^bject,. Nahrally some of.l his work was mathematical, chiefly,on i geometry and the calculus. His '' Geo £f r-V f <***««■" cost him more laurn and^i^ 11 *" ffiOaoßraPh on Sat" wnrl-• i 3 System- - This valuable work is, of course, too technical for the fv h . reador- Other Ejects on ™« nl Wrote were Montal pheno-V^'-a n<\° and Luck > the 6reat & a.nd even Whist. He was an excellent ches 8 player. But these were w» + TT tlOn- His PurP°s« « «fe was the development of astronomy and its interpretation. Proctor's first wife died in 1879, leaving him with six children. After his lecturing tour through Australia and New Zealand in 1881 ho married a widow with two children. So at the time of his death he had eight children dependent on him. Work such as Proctor did cannot fail to have a far-reaching effect for good. Wot one person in a thousand realises that ho is surrounded by a vast and marvellous universe. Few care to listen to the latest news from afar. Citizens would despise a man who refused to consider any place or went beyond the boundaries, say, of Greater Wellington, and who never dreamed of the existence of other cities such as London, Paris, and New York. Yet they themselves take no interest in anything beyond our tiny earth, a- cosmic speck invisible from any body beyond the limits of the Solar System. Even the existence of our sun is unknown in all but the nearest portion of our own galaxy. Now Proctor gave His untir- ! ing energy and .his remarkable abilities to break down this barrier of ignorance. He brought to thousand*, who I would never otherwise have glanced at or thought of celestial bodies, a know-, ledge of the beauties and the marvels of the heavens. His place has remained long unfilled. Fortunately his daughter, Miss Mary Proctor, well known to many in Wellington, is now carrying on the good work. She is following the path of her father's more popular efforts, lecturing, writing articles and books, in. which, the gloryof the universe is made clear to young and old. Amongst tho books she has written are "Legends of the Stars," "Giant Sun and His Family," "Stories of Starland," "Half-Hours With the Summer Stars," "The Children's Book of the Heavens," "Evenings With the Stars," and "The Ebmanco of Comets." She is now preparing enthusiastically- to observe the total eclipse of the sun, which, if the weather is favourable, will be tho fourth' she has seen. It will be-the first visible in England since 1724, and there will not be another until 1999.