Prof. Young, who has charge of the 23-inch refractor at Princeton, has
also commented on the subject of the definition of large telescopes. He
says:—“The greater susceptibility of large instruments to atmospheric
disturbances is most sadly true; and yet, on the whole, I find also
true what Mr. Clark told me would be the case on first mounting
our 23-inch instrument, that _I can almost always see with the
23-inch everything I see with the 9½-inch under the same atmospheric
conditions, and see it better_,—if the seeing is bad only a little
better, if good immensely better.” Prof. Young also mentioned that
a power of 1200 on the 23-inch “worked perfectly on Jupiter on two
different evenings in the spring of 1885 in bringing out fine details
relating to the red spot and showing the true forms of certain white
dots on the S. polar belt.”
The 26-inch refractor at the Leander McCormick Observatory, U. S.
A., is successfully engaged in observations of nebulæ, and many new
objects of this character have been found. It does not appear that the
telescope is much used for other purposes; so that we can attach no
significance to the fact that important discoveries have not been made
with it in other departments.
The great Vienna refractor of 27-inches aperture “does not seem to
accomplish quite what was expected of it,” according to Mr. Sawerthal,
who recently visited the Observatory at Währing, Vienna. The Director,
Dr. Weiss, states in his last report that “the 27-inch Grubb refractor
has only been occasionally used, when the objects were too faint for
the handier instruments.”
The still larger telescopes erected at the Observatories at Pulkowa and
Nice have so recently come into employment that it would be premature
to judge of their performance. In the Annual Report from Pulkowa
(1887) it is stated that Dr. H. Struve was using the 30-inch refractor
“in measuring those of Burnham’s double stars which are only seldom
measurable with the ‘old 15-inch,’ together with other stars of which
measures are scarce. He made 460 measures in eight or nine months, as
well as 166 micro metric observations of the fainter satellites of
Saturn and 15 of that of Neptune.” At Nice the 30-inch refractor was
employed by M. Perrotin in physical observations of Mars in May and
June 1888. The canal-shaped markings of Schiaparelli were confirmed,
and some of them were traced “from the ocean of the southern hemisphere
right across both continents and seas up to the north polar ice-cap.”
The 30-inch also showed some remarkable changes in the markings;
but these were not confirmed at other observatories. The telescope
evidently revealed a considerable amount of detail on this planet;
whence we may infer that its defining power is highly satisfactory.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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