Pleasures of the telescope An Illustrated Guide for Amateur Astronomers and a Popular Description of the Chief Wonders of the Heavens for General Readers

"... the Moon, whose orb The Tuscan artist views through optic glass At evening from the top of Fesolé, Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, Rivers or mountains in her spotty gl...

"... And if there should be Worlds greater than thine own, inhabited By greater things, and they themselves far more In number than the dust of thy dull earth, What wouldst thou...

In the soft air of a summer night, when fireflies are flashing their lanterns over the fields, the stars do not sparkle and blaze like those that pierce the frosty skies of wint...

The eastern end of Pisces, represented in map No. 22, includes most of the interesting telescopic objects that the constellation contains. We begin our exploration at the star n...

"O telescope, instrument of much knowledge, more precious than any scepter! Is not he who holds thee in his hand made king and lord of the works of God?"--JOHN KEPLER.

Let us imagine ourselves the happy possessors of three properly mounted telescopes of five, four, and three inches aperture, respectively. A fine midwinter evening has come alon...

"If thou wouldst gaze on starry Charioteer, And hast heard legends of the wondrous Goat, Vast looming shalt thou find on the Twins' left, His form bowed forward."--POSTE'S ARATUS.

We resume our celestial explorations with the little constellation Lyra, whose chief star, Vega (alpha), has a very good claim to be regarded as the most beautiful in the sky. T...

"These starry globes far surpassed the earth in grandeur, and the latter looked so diminutive that our empire, which appeared only as a point on its surface, awoke my pity."--CI...

Following the order of right ascension, we come next to the little constellations Crater and Corvus, which may be described as standing on the curves of Hydra (map No. 8). Begin...

Peculiarities of the lunar landscapes--The so-called seas, the craters, the ring mountains, the inclosed plains, the mountain ranges, Tycho's mysterious streaks, and other lunar...

The first double star ever discovered, the Pleiades and their photographic wonders, the Royal Family of the Sky, Andromeda, Cassiopeia, Perseus and Cepheus, Ursa Major, Camelopa...

Jupiter, its belts and its moons--Saturn, the ringed planet--Saturn's moons and Roche's limit--Mars and its white polar caps and so-called seas and continents--Venus and her atm...