The Popular Science Monthly, June, 1900: Vol. 57, May, 1900 to October, 1900Various
Science
The Popular Science Monthly, June, 1900: Vol. 57, May, 1900 to October, 1900
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
More than a century ago Sir William Herschel was able to fix roughly
what we call the Apex of the sun’s way in space, or the point among the
stars towards which that way is for the moment directed. We say for the
moment, but we mean that moment of which Bradley saw the beginning in
1750, and upon whose end no man of those now living shall ever look.
Herschel found that a comparison of old stellar observations seemed
to indicate that the stars in a certain part of the sky were opening
out, as it were, and that the constellations in the opposite part of
the heavens seemed to be drawing in, or becoming smaller. There can be
but one reasonable explanation of this. We must be moving towards that
part of the sky where the stars are separating. Just so a man watching
a regiment of soldiers approaching, will see at first only a confused
body of men. But as they come nearer the individual soldiers will seem
to separate, until at length each one is seen distinct from all the
others.
Herschel fixed the position of the apex at a point in the constellation
Hercules. The most recent investigations of Newcomb, published only a
few months ago, have, on the whole, verified Herschel’s conclusions.
With the intuitive power of rare genius, Herschel had been able to
sift truth out of error. The observational data at his disposal would
now be called rude, but they disclosed to the scrutiny of his acute
understanding the germ of truth that was in them. Later investigators
have increased the precision of our knowledge, until we can now say
that the present direction of the solar motion is known within very
narrow limits. A tiny circle might be drawn on the sky, to which an
astronomer might point his hand and say: Yonder little circle contains
the goal towards which the sun and planets are hastening to-day. Even
the speed of this motion has been subjected to measurement, and found
to be about ten miles per second.
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