We entered an observatory car that was run by its own dynamo but in
case of the dynamo giving out a trolley wire overhead could furnish
power any moment. After a pleasant ride of an hour's duration we came
out of the tunnel into the observatory and I saw two magnificently
mounted telescopes, one for visitors to look through and the other one
for taking photographic views. I looked through the visitors' telescope
and to my astonishment the sun was blue and when I asked one of the
astronomers present the reason for it he replied that the sun was a
great dynamo and that the dazzling brightness seen at low altitudes was
caused by our atmosphere offering like the filament in an incandescent
lamp great resistance to the electric energy of the sun producing a
brilliant glow and if you were able to go outside the atmosphere of our
earth you would only see the sun as a dark body in space and you would
find yourself in absolute darkness and eternal silence. Night fell and
when I looked again through the telescope and gazed on the countless
hosts of heaven's millions of suns there came into my mind and I
repeated aloud that noble passage in the Bible, "The heavens declare
the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork." I remarked
to the Chief Engineer as we went down to the station, that a great many
people visited the observatory, for I had looked in the visitors' book,
where every person was required to sign his name. He replied, "Yes, if
a private company owned it, it would make the stockholders wealthy, for
it has become to the globe-trotters what Mecca is to the Mohammedans
for no tourist would dare to return home without registering at the
observatory and we encourage them by publishing their names in the
National Gazette.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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