Now, stellar photographs are made in much the same way as ordinary
portraits. Only, instead of using a simple camera, the astronomer
exposes his photographic plate at the eye-end of a telescope. The
sensitive surface of the plate is substituted for the human eye. We
then find on the picture a little dot corresponding to every star
within the photographed region of the sky. But, as everyone knows,
the turning of the earth on its axis makes the whole heavens,
including the sun, moon, and stars, rise and set every day. So the
stars, when we photograph them, are sure to be either climbing up
in the eastern sky or else slowly creeping down in the western. And
that makes astronomical photography very different from ordinary
portrait work.
The stars correspond to the sitter, but they don't sit still.
For this reason it is necessary to connect the telescope with a
mechanical contrivance which makes it turn round like the hour-hand
of an ordinary clock. The arrangement is so adjusted that the
telescope, once aimed at the proper object in the sky, will move
so as to remain pointed exactly the same during the whole time of
the photographic exposure. Thus, while the light of any star is
acting on the plate, such action will be continuous at a single
point. Consequently, the finished picture will show the star as a
little dot; while without this arrangement, the star would trail
out into a line instead of a dot. Now we have seen that the planets
are all moving slowly among the fixed stars. So if we make a star
photograph in a part of the sky where a planet happens to be, the
planet will make a short line on the plate; whereas, if the planet
remained quite unmoved relatively to the stars it would give a dot
like the star dots. The presence of a line, therefore, at once
indicates a planet.
This method of planet-hunting has proved most useful. More than 400
small planets similar to Piazzi's have been found, though never
another one like Uranus and Neptune. As we have said, all these
little bodies lie between Mars and Jupiter. They evidently belong
to a group or family, and many astronomers have been led to believe
that they are but fragments of a former large planet.
In August, 1898, however, one was found by Witt, of Berlin, which
will probably occupy a very prominent place in the annals of
astronomy. For this planet goes well within the orbit of Mars,
and this will bring it at times very close to the earth. In fact,
when the motions of the new planet and the earth combine to bring
them to their positions of greatest proximity, the new planet will
approach us closer than any other celestial body except our own
moon. Witt named his new planet Eros. Its size, though small, may
prove to be sufficient to bring it within the possibilities of
naked-eye observation at the time of closest approach to the earth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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