Abstract
THE statistics of modern astronomical observation would, we suspect, be very curious, if it were possible to get at them. A report showing the gradual increase in the number of telescopes manufactured during the last fifty years would be very interesting; and so would be a table comprising at once the advance in their dimensions and the diminution in their cost. The result would, we believe, be such as at first sight to cause great surprise among those unacquainted with the subject, or those whose recollection does not go back to days when five nches was as extraordinary an aperture for an object-glass, as double that size is now. But the value of these, as of other tabular statistics, would suffer material abatement, if they were applied to establish any other conclusions than those to which they directly lead. For instance they would probably be fallacious; if considered as inferring a proportionate increase in the number of important observations. In order to bring out such a result, we require, so to speak, another factor, and a very essential one—a corresponding increase in the number of competent observers. This, we fear, may not have been commensurate with the advance of optical means: at least, except upon the supposition of some such deficiency, it is difficult to understand what becomes of the multitude of really good object-glasses which are annually produced, not only in England, but in Germany and America. A large proportion of these, we are led to think, must be purchased to be looked at, and not looked through: or handled as mere toys for the amusement of people who do not know what to do with themselves in an idle evening. This was not so much the case in the early days of telescope-manufacture. The greatest master of figuring specula in his own time was also the greatest proficient in using them: it is needless to add the name of Sir William Herschel. And so the finest reflectors in Germany were placed at the same period in the hands of the leader of all accurate selenographical investigation, J. H. Schröter. These were “the right men in the right place.” Even then, it may be said, many noble reflectors went, no one knows where, the greater part of them long before this time useless from tarnish, or, still more mortifying to think upon, ruined by unskilful repolishing. Still, admitting this, the disappearance of powerful instruments does not seem to have been so remarkable in those days as it is now, and the quantity of really valuable observations appears to have been greater in the end of the last and the early part of the present century, in proportion to the means of observing.
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Astronomical Observation . Nature 4, 30–31 (1871). https://doi.org/10.1038/004030a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/004030a0