Through the Telescope

Even the most casual observer of the heavens cannot have failed to notice that in certain instances the stars are grouped so closely together as to form well-marked clusters. Th...

Having thus briefly sketched the history of the telescope, we turn now to consider the optical means which are most likely to be in the hands or within the reach of the beginner...

Our attention is next engaged by the body which is our nearest neighbour in space and our most faithful attendant and useful servant. The moon is an orb of 2,163 miles in diamet...

There is one type of celestial object which seldom fails to stir up the mind of even the most sluggishly unastronomical member of the community and to inspire him with an intere...

We now leave the bounds of our own system, and pass outwards towards the almost infinite spaces and multitudes of the fixed stars. In doing so we are at once confronted with a w...

From its comparative nearness, its brightness and size, and its supreme importance to ourselves, the sun commands our attention; and in the phenomena which it presents there is...

Passing outwards from the zone of the minor planets, we come to the greatest and most magnificent member of the solar system, the giant planet Jupiter. To most observers, Jupite...

The Red Planet is our nearest neighbour on the further, as Venus is on the hither side. He is also in some ways the planet best situated for our observation; for while the great...

At nearly double the distance of Jupiter from the sun circles the second largest planet of our system, unique, so far as human knowledge goes, in the character of its appendages...

Hitherto we have been dealing with bodies which, from time immemorial, have been known to man as planets. There must have been a period when one by one the various members of ou...

We have now reached the point beyond which mere telescopic power will not carry us, a point as definite for the largest instrument as for the smallest. We have traced what can b...

Next in order to Mercury, proceeding outwards from the sun, comes the planet Venus, the twin-sister, so to speak, of the earth, and familiar more or less to everybody as the Mor...

The claim of priority in the invention of this wonderful instrument, which has so enlarged our ideas of the scale and variety of the universe, has been warmly asserted on behalf...

The planet nearest to the sun is not one which has proved itself particularly attractive to observers in the past; and the reasons for its comparative unattractiveness are suffi...

In the year 1772 Bode of Berlin published the statement of a curiously symmetrical relation existing among the planets of our system. The gist of this relation, known as Bode's...