Astronomy with an Opera-glass: A Popular Introduction to the Study of the Starry Heavens with the Simplest of Optical InstrumentsServiss, Garrett Putman
Science
Astronomy with an Opera-glass: A Popular Introduction to the Study of the Starry Heavens with the Simplest of Optical Instruments
Serviss, Garrett Putman
Astronomy
Yet Galileo's observations at once upset the theory, for which
Apollonius was responsible, and which seems to have been widely
prevalent up to his time, that the moon was a smooth body, polished like
a mirror, and presenting in its light and dark spots reflections of the
continents and oceans of the earth. He also demonstrated that its
surface was covered with plains and mountains, but the "cities and
temples" of the moon have remained to our time only within the ken of
romance.
Galileo's telescope, as I have before remarked, was, in the principle of
its construction, simply an opera-glass of one tube. He succeeded in
making a glass of this kind that magnified thirty diameters, a very much
higher power than is given to the opera-and field-glasses of to-day. Yet
he had to contend with the disadvantages of single lenses, achromatic
combinations of glass for optical purposes not being contrived until
nearly a hundred years after his death, and so his telescope did not
possess quite as decided a superiority over a modern field-glass as the
difference in magnifying power would imply. In fact, if the reader will
view the moon with a first-rate field-glass, he will perceive that the
true nature of the surface of the lunar globe can be readily discerned
with such an instrument. Even a small opera-glass will reveal much to
the attentive observer of the moon; but for these observations the
reader should, if possible, make use of a field-glass, and the higher
its power the better. The illustrations accompanying this chapter were
made by the author with the aid of a glass magnifying seven diameters.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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