THE WORLDS OF SPACE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 98, 25 April 1912, Page 2

THE WORLDS OF SPACE.

A \ INTERESTING LECTURE. Mi - T. War<], of Wanganui, delivered an interesting lecture the other night before the members of the Palmerston Philosophical S'nek'ty, the subject being “Tho Worlds of Space as seen by the Astronomical Telescope.” The speaker comonced by asking what we would have known of the immensity of the universe and tho grandeur of its countless suns mud nebulea bad the telescope never boon invented. Allusion was then made, to tho manner of the discovery of tho telescope. Tie took his hearers hack to the year 1009. to the little shop of Hans Liporshoy, at Middlohnrg, Ho!-

land. The old m:;n was making spectacles—helping the people to see better. ll's sod, or an apprentice, came in and took up a couple ol lenses of different focal lengths and by a piece of good fortune hold them in swell a way as we would, with the experience that came later on, place them if are wished to lix them in a tube and make a telescope. He saw the weather cock on a distant spire. It appeared quite close ami much larger, and he told his iatliei, uho tried the arraiigomeilt, and was quite surprised. Tho old mail then got a piece of tube and fixed the lenses in their right positrons and was immediately struck with the .value of the discovery. Humour of the discovery gradually spread, and the speaker told how Galileo heard oi it and set to work independently and made his own telescopes. The first crude makeshifts 'showed him enough to 'inspire him to proceed, and he went on developing his discovery. From the telescope of Galileo to those of the present day the goal of tho astronomer had been to probe the depths that surround him. Then came “the eye that does not forgot”—the sensitive plate. Photography opened up new fields, and carried us out to more distant regions than the eye, in conjunction witli tho most powerful telescope, could ever reach. For what tho eye saw at the telescope was grasped almost as soon as we looked into the instrument, hut the sensitised plate picked up the faint rays, invisible to the eye, and hour after hour registered the impressions made, until the invisible object, situated in the remote depths of space, printed a representation of itself upon the plate, and it was then “fixed.” tSo we had a permanent record which would serve the astronomers of tho future and enable them to make comparisons of value to science. Beautiful lantern slides of the moon’s surface, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, as well as those of the nebulae and star clusters, were projected upon the screen. Tho objects of interest- upon tho moon’s surface, its walled plains, craters, mountain ranges, clefts and valleys, and bright ray-streaks, wore pointed out and explained in the light of present day knowledge of these remarkable formations. The physical features of Mars were illustrated by a number of flue slides, tho lecturer dealing meanwhile with the planet as a world, possibly possessed of an atmosphere sufficient to support some land of life. Its polar caps, .increasing and decreasing as the seasons changed, the undoubted variation of the regions near the poles, pointed to the conclusion of water existing on its surface. The gradual fading out of its physical features when near tho limb or edge of the disc was also evidence of an atmosphere. The “canal” systems of Schiaparelli and Lowell were also referred to and illustrated, and the difficulty of accepting the evidence offered for this fine network of single and double lines was pointed out. The fact that very capable observers, using telescopes of larger ai/.o and of fine quality, had failed to confirm those observations, was referred to, as well as to some interesting experiments made- in other directions, as evidence only of the subjeetjive reality of these markings. Jupiter and Saturn wore illustrated and discussed, tho ring system of Saturn coming in for some interesting description. Tho observation of double-stars, more especially the work done at the Wanganui Observatory, on these interesting objects, was entered into and described, and by far the most interesting portion of. the whole came towards the close, with a hue series of slides illustrating many of the nebulae and star clusters, visible in both hemispheres. These magnificent objects brought homo to the mind, more than anything else, the (immensity of space and the magnitude of tho clusters ns revealed by the descriptive matter accompanying them. It was pointed out that an ordinary looking star in Orion was so distant that tho sun, if situated in its place, would shine as a star of the tenth magnitude and that it would require a good telescope to make it visible at all; that this star was really 7800 times brighter than the sun would he if placed at tho same distance, and that it was at least 20,000 times as heavy as the sun. It was stated further that a faint object barely visible to the naked eye as a, hazy star, was in reality a cluster of 6387 suns, situated at such an enormous distance that light, travelling at the rule of 186,000 miles in every soeohd of time, took at least 2500 years to roach the earth from these suns, and that, from the tele-' scopie measurement of the diameter of this cluster, it occupied a space of such an extent that light would take no less than fourteen years to pass from one side of it to the other, although wo were assured (it took only eight minutes to come from tho sun, which was 93,000,000 miles away from us. Much data was offered in illustration of the manner in which results, such as those, were arrived at, all very wonderful when wo thought of man, as a particle of Nature, having the. power to probe some of its mys- ; tories and immensities.