The Science of the Stars

Astronomical measurement has not only given us the distances of the various planets from the Sun; it has also furnished us, as in the annexed table, with their real diameters, a...

The first step towards our knowledge of the starry heavens was made when the unknown and forgotten astronomers of 2700 B.C. arranged the stars into constellations, for it was th...

The fundamental thought which, recognised or not, had lain at the root of the Ptolemaic system, as indeed it lies at the root of all science, was that "like causes must always p...

The old proverb has it that "Science is measurement," and of none of the sciences is this so true as of the science of astronomy. Indeed the measurement of time by observation o...

There was thus a real science of astronomy before we have any history of it. Some important discoveries had been made, and the first step had been taken towards cataloguing the...

And the apparent path of the Sun on one day is always parallel to its path on the days preceding and following. When, therefore, the Sun rises far to the south of east, he sets...

The plan of the present series requires each volume to be complete in about eighty small pages. But no adequate account of the achievements of astronomy can possibly be given wi...