Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 September 1893 — America’s Achievements in Astronomy [ARTICLE]

America’s Achievements in Astronomy

The chief problems relating to the sun are the study of its spectrum; meusures of the amounts of its radiant light and heat; registration of the phenomena of solar eclipses and of the corona; photography of the spectra and of the forms of the spots, the protuberances, the faculie; investigation of the laws governing its rotation and of the law governing the production of its heat through shrinkage, etc., etc. In every one of these departments Americans have born< or are bearing an important part. The planetary surfaces have been successfully and assiduously studied both by photography and visually; and the spectra of the major planets investigated. Minor planets (or asteroids) have been discovered in great numbers by means of elaborate stellar charts constructed for this especial purpose; seventy-eight asteroids have been discovered in America alone and their orbits have been calculated. New satellites accompanying Saturn, Jupiter and Mars have been discovered here. The brilliant discovery of ;the fact that terrestrial latitudes go through a cycle of (small) changes in about four hundred and thirty day* is due to an American. The first daguerreotype of the moon was taken in New York, and since that time the lunar surface has been assiduously and successfully photographed by several American observatories, private and public.—[Edward S. Holden, in the Forum.