Identifier: adolfostahllectu00astruoft (find matches)
Title: The Adolfo Stahl lectures in astronomy, delivered in San Francisco, California, in 1916-17 and 1917-18, under the auspices of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific
Year: 1919 (1910s)
Authors: Astronomical Society of the Pacific Aitken, Robert Grant, 1864-1951
Subjects: Astronomy
Publisher: San Francisco Stanford University Press
Contributing Library: Gerstein - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
e many isolated groups, some including only a fewtiny glittering points of light, others larger, though morecompact, but likewise isolated, except as the brilliant headlightof an electric train or the lights of motor cars, slowly thread-ing their way across the valley, suggest and symbolize all theintimate relationships that knit together the life of moderntowns and cities. There is much in the spectacle to touch the imagination,but it is not the imaginative suggestiveness of the scene thatrequires our interest now, so much as a certain parallelismwith the heavens above. Alany things have been learned aboutthe stars, but to understand them, to comprehend and makethem a really vital part of our knowledge of the world aboutus, they must be pictured in terms of every-day experience,translated into language so familiar that we give no thoughtto the medium in which the facts are set before us. On ablack and moonless night, the glittering lights of the valley are 1 Delivered March IS, 1918.
Text Appearing After Image:
PLATE XLVII. Lights in the Valley Below Mount Wilson. The Brightness of the Stars 209 not unlike a glorious constellation; and the analogies that maybe traced between them and the distant stars smooth awaymany difficulties which otherwise would be encountered. 1. The Fixed Stars—Early Conceptions To the ancients the stars were the fixed stars. dis-tinguished from the wandering stars or planets by the factthat they hold unchanged their positions with respect to oneanother. The objects which for the Chaldean shepherd com-prised the constellation of Orion still appear above the southernhorizon during winter evenings, with the configuration theyhad three thousand years ago. They were just glittering pointsof light securely attached to the surface of the celestial vault,whose daily rotation carried them about the stationary Earthfrom which he watched them rise and set and sweep across thesky. And thus the stars remained, fixed, until two hundred yearsago, when Halley, in 1718, showed tha

Note About Images