In our survey we may best begin with his globe. If Jupiter’s
compression is striking, Saturn’s is positively startling when well
displayed. This happens but at rare intervals. As the plane of his
equator is almost exactly that of the rings, the flattening is
conspicuous only on those occasions when the rings disappear because
their plane passes through the line of sight. Seen at such times the
effect of the discrowned orb is so strange as to suggest delusion.
This occurred two years ago in 1907, and when the planet was picked up
by its position and entered the field unheralded by its distinctive
appendage, it was almost impossible to believe there had not been
some mistake and a caricatured Jupiter had taken its place. For the
flattening outdoes that of Jupiter as 3 to 2, being ⅒ of the equatorial
diameter. Such a bulging almost suggests disruption and is due to
the extreme lightness of the planet’s substance, which is actually
only 0.72 of that of water. Like Jupiter, the disk exhibits belts,
though very much fainter, and, like his, these are of a cherry red. As
the planet’s albedo is even greater, 0.78 of absolute whiteness, as
deduced from H. Struve’s measures of the diameter, the same suspicion
of shining, at least in part, from inherent light, applies equally
to him. But it is practically certain that in neither case does this
light equal that of the planet’s clouds, or add anything to them. Both
planets are red-hot, not white-hot. The determination of the albedo
depends upon that of the diameter, and an increase in the latter would
lower the albedo to that of cloud.
His most unique possession are his rings. Broad, yet tenuous, they
weigh next to nothing, being, as Struve has dubbed them, “Immaterial
light.” Nevertheless, it is not their lightness but their make-up that
prevents from lying uneasy the head that wears this crown.
The mechanical marvel was not appreciated by early astronomers, who
took it for granted that they were what they seemed, solid, flat rings,
all of a piece. Even Laplace considered it sufficient to divide them up
concentrically to insure stability. To Edouard Roche of Montpellier,
as retiringly modest as he was penetratingly profound, is due the
mathematical detection that to subsist they must be composed of
discrete particles,—brickbats, Clerk Maxwell called them, when, later,
unaware of Roche’s work, he proved independently the same thing in his
essay on Saturn’s rings. Peirce, too, in ignorance of Roche, had half
taken the same step a little before, showing that they must at least
be fluid. Then in 1895 Keeler ingeniously photographed the spectrum of
both ball and rings to the revealing of velocities in the line of sight
of the different portions of the spectrum exactly agreeing with the
values mechanics demanded.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account