A NEW EYE TO STUDY THE

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 140, 10 December 1935, Page 8

A NEW EYE TO STUDY THE

STARS

While mankind is annihilating distance in its habitation on earth by the miracle of the wireless and the swift-flying aeroplane, the greater world in the outer regions of space will be brought closer when the gigantic telescope at Mount Wilson, California, for which the huge 200----inch mirror has been taken from the annealing oven, is ready for the human eye to begin a more intense study of the stars. This will not be so soon as the cable from Corning, New York, the site of the glassworks where the mirror was cast, suggests. The delicate operations of casting and annealing have been successfully performed, but the mirror has still Iq be ground to the required curva-

turc and polished before it can be fitted-to the telescope. This also is a task that requires the greatest skill. But when the mirror is installed and all is ready, what a prospect opens out to the astronomer! Here is an "eye" that "increases the volume of the observer's known universe twenty-seven limes and the extent of vision into space to 1,200,000,000 light years—thrice the distance now possible with the 100----inch telescope." Compared with the 6000 stars visible to the naked eye, over a million and a half will come within the ken of the new telescope. Of more direct appeal to the average man is the fact that "it will bring the moon within 25 miles visibility from the earth," or about the distance of tile South Island seen across Cook Strait. Whether it will reveal any form of life, such as Mr. Wells suggests in his "First Men in the Moon," is doubtful, but there is a greater curiosity about the mystery of the "canals" on Mars and the possibility of life on that planet. The new telescope, with its power to aid a closer scrutiny than has been possible before, may furnish some solution of this fascinating problem.