Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 January 1880 — Astronomical Progress. [ARTICLE]

Astronomical Progress.

Mr. Proctor, the astronomer, recently expressed the opinion that Mars was the only planet beside the earth old enough to be inhabited. The others, he thinks, are still glowing with heat. He also uttered the following opinion : “ The stars are rapidly ceasing to be regardedjas objects of beauty simply, and the time is approaching when intelligent people will be ashamed to gaze in indifferent admiration upon the firmament and acknowledge their ignorance in a field which the vast strides of modern science have made accessible to all. “Draper’s discovery of oxygen in the sun is the most important fact in modern astronomical research, because it shows that the sun is in part composed of elements like the earth’s. “ Saturn’s rings ‘will eventually resolve themselves into moons, and the dark places on the moon are not mountains or seas, but simply indentations, and therefore less luminous. The black spots visible upon the surface of the sun are but holes through the surrounding envelope through which only the parent mass can be seen.”