The Orbit of the Sun and the Solar System.

Progress, Volume III, Issue I, 1 November 1907, Page 23

The Orbit of the Sun and the Solar System.

Professor Pcckham, of the Ade'phi College, Brooklyn has descended heavily on the theory of the gentlemen who recently described the orbit of the sun and the solar system with a great display of interesting detail. Here is the pith of the Professor's refutation • — " As to the speed of the sun. in its path, astrono mers are agreed that this is about 12 miles a second. At this velocity, which is a slow one as velocities go in the heavens, we go 1,036,800 miles a day, as any one can determine by multiplication, instead of 5,000,000 miles a year, as the writer states, and nearly 400,000,000 miles a >ear. Yet the stars are

when the sun gets there. They will be far away from the places they now occupy. Let us see how long it would require the sun to travel to the place where Arcturus now is. The parallax accepted for that star gives its distance such that light requires 160 years to come from us to him and that we should go to him will require nearly 2 500 000 years at the rate of 12 miles a second. Iv the light of such figures a period of 75,000 years becomes a mere pomt of time a watch m the night.

The determination of the pomt m the sky towards which the sun is moving is a matter of much interest to astronomers but it is one on which no more than a beginning of investigation has been made Her schel, more than a hundred yeais ago, studied the proper motion of the stars, and located this pomt m the constellation Hercules Many others of the highest repute including Struve and our own Newcomb, have followed Herschel, and have reached a slightly different result, although they do not remove the point very far from Hercules. It is now located near Vega in the constellation of Lyra, or by Campbell, at a spot 10 deg south of this star. The opposite point is near Sinus and not near Polaris. Any one who is interested m this investigation will find a statement upon it given m Milton's "Astronomy," the latest and best te\t book for students beginning the subject

so remote that the sun will require 68,000 years to cross the space separating it from the nearest star at this enormous rate of motion Again, astronomers are agreed that the sun zs moving toward Vega and not Arcturus, and that it will require the sun 558,000 years to pass by Vega But we shall never pass by Vega, although we are moving toward it, nor would we pass Arcturus, if we were at present moving toward that star, since these stars are themselves moving, and will not be where they are now