Half-hours with the Telescope: Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a Means of Amusement and Instruction.Proctor, Richard A. (Richard Anthony)
Science
Half-hours with the Telescope: Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a Means of Amusement and Instruction.
Proctor, Richard A. (Richard Anthony)
Astronomy; Telescopes
This box should be made of black cloth or calico fastened over a light
framework of wire or cane. The base of the pyramid should be covered on
the inside with a sheet of white glazed paper, or with some other
uniform white surface. Captain Noble, I believe, makes use of a surface
of plaster of Paris, smoothed while wet with plate-glass. The door _b
c_ enables the observer to "change power" without removing the box,
while larger doors, _d e_ and _g f_, enable him to examine the image; a
dark cloth, such as photographers use, being employed, if necessary, to
keep out extraneous light. The image may also be examined from without,
if the bottom of the pyramid be formed of a sheet of cut-glass or oiled
tissue-paper.
When making use of the method just described, it is very necessary that
the telescope-tube should be well balanced. A method by which this may
be conveniently accomplished has been already described in Chapter I.
But, undoubtedly, for the possessor of a moderately good telescope there
is no way of viewing the sun's features comparable to that now to be
described, which has been systematically and successfully applied for a
long series of years by the Rev. F. Howlett. To use his own words: "Any
one possessing a good achromatic of not more than three inches'
aperture, who has a little dexterity with his pencil, and a little time
at his disposal (all the better if it be at a somewhat early hour of the
morning)" may by this method "deliberately and satisfactorily view,
measure, and (if skill suffice) delineate most of those interesting and
grand solar phenomena of which he may have read, or which he may have
seen depicted, in various works on physical astronomy."[15]
The method in question depends on the same property which is involved in
the use of the pyramidal box just described, supplemented (where exact
and systematic observation is required) by the fact that objects lying
on or between the lenses of the eye-piece are to be seen faithfully
projected on the white surface on which the sun's image is received. In
place, however, of a box carried upon the telescope-tube, a darkened
room (or true _camera obscura_) contains the receiving sheet.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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