CHAPTER XV.

THE MICROMETER.

It will have been gathered from the previous chapter that the perfect circles nowadays turned out by our best opticians, and armed in different parts by powerful reading microscopes, in conjunction with a cross wire in the field of view of the telescope to determine the exact axis of collimation, enable large arcs to be measured with an accuracy comparable to that with which an astronomical clock enables us to measure an interval of time.

We have next to see by what method small arcs are measured in the field of view of the telescope itself. This is accomplished by what are termed micrometers, which are of various forms. Thus we have the wire micrometer, the heliometer, the double-image micrometer, and so on. These we shall now consider in succession, entering into further details of their use, and the arrangements they necessitate when we come to consider the instrument in conjunction with which they are generally employed.

The history of the micrometer is a very curious one. We have already spoken of a pair of cross wires replacing the pinnules of the old astronomers in the field of view of the telescope, so that it might be pointed to any celestial object very much more accurately than it could be without such cross wires. This kind of micrometer was first applied to a telescope by Gascoigne in 1639. In a letter to Crabtree he writes:[10] “If here (in the focus of the telescope) you place the scale that measures ... _or if here a hair be set_ that it appear perfectly through the glass ... you may use it in a quadrant for the finding of the altitude of the least star visible by the perspective wherein it is. If the night be so dark that the hair or the pointers of the scale be not to be seen, I place a candle in a lanthorn, so as to cast light sufficient into the glass, which I find very helpful when the moon appeareth not, or it is not otherwise light enough.”

This then was the first “telescopic sight,” as these arrangements at the common focus of the object-glass and eyepiece were at first called. It is certain that we may date the micrometer from the middle of the seventeenth century; but it is rather difficult to say who it was who invented it. It is frequently attributed to a Frenchman named Auzout, who is stated to have invented it in 1666; but we have reason to know that Gascoigne had invented an instrument for measuring small distances several years before. Though first employed by Gascoigne, however, they were certainly independently introduced on the Continent, and took various forms, one of them being a reticule, or network of small silver threads, suggested by the Marquis Malvasia, the arc interval of which was determined by the aid of a clock. Huyghens had before this proposed, as specially applicable to the measures of the diameters of planets and the like, the introduction of a tapering slip of metal. The part of the slip which exactly eclipsed the planet was noted; it was next measured by a pair of compasses, and having the focal length of the telescope, the apparent diameter was ascertained.

Malvasia’s suggestion was soon seized upon for determinations of position. Römer introduced into the first transit instrument a horizontal and a number of vertical wires. The interval between the three he generally used was thirty-four seconds in the equator, and the time was noted to half seconds. The field was illuminated by means of a polished ring placed outside of the object-glass. The simple system of cross wires, then, though it has done its work, is not to be found in the telescope now, either to mark the axis of collimation, or roughly to measure small distances. For the first purpose a much more elaborate system than that introduced by Römer is used. We have a large number of vertical wires, the principal object of which is, in such telescopes as the transit, to determine the absolute time of the passage of either a star or planet, or the sun or moon, over the meridian; and one or more horizontal ones. These constitute the modern transit eyepiece, a very simple form of which is shown in the above woodcut.

THE WIRE MICROMETER.

The wire micrometer is due to suggestions made independently by Hooke and Auzout, who pointed out how valuable the reticule of Malvasia would be if one of the wires were movable.

The first micrometer in which motion was provided consisted of two plates of tin placed in the eyepiece, being so arranged and connected by screws that the distances between the two edges of the tin plates could be determined with considerable accuracy. A planet could then be, as it were, grasped between the two plates, and its diameter measured; it is very obvious that what would do as well as these plates of tin would be two wires or hairs representing the edges of these tin plates; and this soon after was carried out by Hooke, who left his mark in a very decided way on very many astronomical arrangements of that time. He suggested that all that was necessary to determine the diameter of Saturn’s rings was to have a fixed wire in the eyepiece, and a second wire travelling in the field of view, so that the planet or the ring could be grasped between those two wires.

The wire-micrometer. Fig. 104, differs little from the one Hooke and Auzout suggested, A A is the frame, which carries two slides, C and D, across the ends of each of which fine wires, E and B, are stretched; then, by means of screws, F and G, threaded through these movable slides and passing through the frame A A, the wires can be moved near to, or away from, each other. Care must be taken that the threads of the screw are accurate from one end to the other, so that one turn of the screw when in one position would move the wire the same distance as a turn when in another position. In this micrometer both wires are movable, so as to get a wide separation if needful, but in practice only one is so, the other remaining a fixture in the middle of the field of view. There is a large head to the screw, which is called the micrometer screw, marked into divisions, so that the motion of the wire due to each turn of the screw may be divided, say into 100 parts, by actual division against a fixed pointer, and further into 1,000 parts by estimation of the parts of each division. Hooke suggested that, if we had a screw with 100 turns to an inch, and could divide these into 1,000 parts, we should obviously get the means of dividing an inch into 100,000 parts; and so, if we had a screw which would give 100 turns from one side of the field of view of the telescope to the other, we should have an opportunity of dividing the field of view of any telescope into something like 100,000 parts in any direction we chose.

The thick wires, _x_, _y_, are fixed to the plate in front of, but almost touching, the fine wires, and in measuring, for instance, the distance of two stars the whole instrument is turned round until these wires are parallel to the direction of the imaginary line joining them.

This was the way in which Huyghens made many important measures of the diameters of different objects and the distances of different stars. Thus far we are enabled to find the number of divisions on the micrometer screw that corresponds to the distance from one star to another, or across a planet, but we want to know the number of seconds of arc in the distance measured.

In order to do this accurately we must determine how many divisions of the screw correspond to the distance of the wires when on two stars, say, one second apart. Here we must take advantage of the rate at which a star travels across the field when the telescope is fixed, and we separate the wires by a number of turns of the screw, say twenty, and find what angle this corresponds to, by letting a star on or near the equator[11] traverse the field, and noticing the time it requires to pass from one wire to the next. Suppose it takes 26⅔ seconds, then, as fifteen seconds of arc pass over in one second of time, we must multiply 26 by 15, which gives 400, so that the distance from wire to wire is 400 seconds of arc; but this is due to twenty revolutions of the screw, so that each revolution corresponds to 400/20˝, or twenty seconds, and as each revolution is divided into 100 parts, and 20/100˝ = ⅕˝ therefore each division corresponds to ⅕˝ of arc.

We shall return to the use of this most important instrument when we have described the equatorial, of which it is the constant companion.

THE HELIOMETER.

There are other kinds of micrometers which we must also briefly consider. In the heliometer[12] we get the power of measuring distances by doubling the images of the objects we see, by means of dividing the object-glass. The two circles, A and B, Fig. 105, represent the two images of Jupiter formed, as we shall show presently, and touching each other; now, if by any means we can make B travel over A till it has the position C, also just touching A, it will manifestly have travelled over a distance equal to the diameters of A and B, so that if we can measure the distance traversed and divide it by 2, we shall get the diameter of the circle A, or the planet. The same principle applies to double stars, for if we double the stars A and B, Fig. 105, so that the secondary images become A´ and B´, we can move A´ over B, and then only three stars will be visible; we can then move the secondary images back over A and B till B´ comes over A, and the second image of A comes to A´. It is thus manifest that the images A´ and B´ on being moved to A´ and B´ in the second position have passed over double their distance apart. Now all double-image micrometers depend on this principle, and first we will explain how this duplication of images is made in the heliometer. It is clear that we shall not alter the power of an object-glass to bring objects to focus if we cut the object-glass in two, for if we put any dark line across the object-glass, which optically cuts it in two, we shall get an image, say of Jupiter, unaltered. But suppose instead of having the parts of the object-glass in their original position after we have cut the object-glass in two, we make one half of the object-glass travel over the other in the manner represented in Fig. 107. Each of these halves of the object-glass will be competent to give us a different image, and the light forming each image will be half the light we got from the two halves of the object-glass combined; but when one half is moved we shall get two images in two different places in the field of view. We can so alter the position of the images of objects by sliding one half of the object-glass over the other, that we shall, as in the case of the planet Jupiter, get the two images exactly to touch each other, as is represented in Fig. 105; and further still, we can cause one image to travel over to the other side. If we are viewing a double star, then the two halves will give four stars, and we can slide one half, until the central image formed by the object-glasses will consist of two images of two different stars, and on either side there will be an image of each star, so that there would appear to be three stars in the field of view instead of two. We have thus the means of determining absolutely the distance of any two celestial objects from each other, in terms of the separation of the centres of the two halves of the object-glass.

But as in the case of the wire micrometer we must know the value of the screw, so in the case of the heliometer we must know how much arc is moved over by a certain motion of one half of the object-glass.

THE DOUBLE-IMAGE MICROMETER.

Now there is another kind of double-image micrometer which merits attention. In this case the double image is derived from a different physical fact altogether, namely, double refraction. Those who have looked through a crystal of Iceland spar, Fig. 108, have seen two images of everything looked at when the crystal is held in certain positions, but the surfaces of the crystal can be cut in a certain plane such that when looked through, the images are single. For the micrometer therefore we have doubly refracting prisms, cut in such a way as to vary the distance of the images. Generally speaking, whenever a ray of light falls on a crystal of Iceland spar or other double refracting substance, it is divided up into two portions, one of which is refracted more than the other. If we trace the rays proceeding from a point S, Fig. 109, we find one portion of the light reaching the eye is more refracted at the surfaces than the other, and consequently one appears to come from E and the other from O, so that if we insert such a crystal in the path of rays from any object, that object appears doubled. There is, however, a certain direction in the crystal, along which, if the light travel, it is not divided into two rays, and this direction is that of the optic axis of the crystal, A A, Fig. 110; if therefore two prisms of this spar are made so that in one the light shall travel parallel to the axis, and in the other at right angles to it, and if these be fastened together so that their outer sides are parallel, as shown in Fig. 111, light will pass through the first one without being split up, since it passes parallel to the axis, but on reaching the second one it is divided into two rays, one of which proceeds on in the original course, since the two prisms counteract each other for this ray, while the other ray diverges from the first one, and gives a second image of the object in front of the telescope, as shown in Fig. _b_. The separation of the image depends on the distance of the prisms from the eyepiece, so that we can pass the rays from a star or planet through one of these compound crystals and measure the position of the crystal and so the separation of the stars, and then we shall have the means of doing the same that we did by dividing our object-glass, and in a less expensive way, for to take a large object-glass of eight or ten inches in diameter and cut it in two is a brutal operation, and has generally been repented of when it has been done.

It is obvious that a Barlow lens, cut in the same manner as the object-glass of the heliometer, will answer the same purpose; the two halves are of course moved in just the same manner as the halves of the divided object-glass. Mr. Browning has constructed micrometers on this principle.

There is yet another double-image micrometer depending on the power of a prism to alter the direction of rays of light. It is constructed by making two very weak prisms, _i.e._, having their sides very nearly parallel, and cutting them to a circular shape; these are mounted in a frame one over the other with power to turn one round, so that in one position they both act in the same direction, and in the opposite one they neutralise each other; these are carried by radial arms, and are placed either in front of the object-glass or at such a distance from it inside the telescope that they intercept one half of the light, and the remaining portion goes to form the usual image, while the other is altered in its course by the prism and forms another image, and this alteration depends on the position of the movable prism.

Footnote 10:

Grant’s _History of Physical Astronomy_, p. 454.

Footnote 11:

More accurately the time of transit is to be multiplied by the cosine of the star’s declination.

Footnote 12:

So called because the contrivance was first used to measure the diameter of the sun.