Abstract
CELESTIAL PHOTOGRAPHY BY SIMPLE MEANS.—In the hands of Prof. Barnard, the “magic lantern” lens has developed into an instrument of considerable astronomical importance. The lens actually employed by him is a 1½ inch doublet of 4 or 5 inches equivalent focus, and the scale of the pictures is roughly 10° to an inch. Six beautiful photographs of various parts of the Milky Way taken with this small optical aid are reproduced in the Astrophysical Journal, vol. ii. No. 5, and they admirably illustrate the value of such an instrument in the delineation of extended nebulosities and in photographing large areas of the sky. They are selected from the more remarkable parts of the Milky Way, but Prof. Barnard has obtained a great number of such photographs, and proposes soon to construct a photographic chart from them. The picture of the new nebulous region in Scorpio shows two very obvious streams or “dark lanes” which are almost void of stars, and various peculiarities are presented by the other photographs.
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Our Astronomical Column. Nature 53, 229 (1896). https://doi.org/10.1038/053229a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/053229a0