A New Manual of the Elements of Astronomy: Descriptive and Mathematical: Comprising the Latest Discoveries and Theoretic Views ...

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Ivison, Phinney, Blakeman & Company, 1868 - Astronomy - 284 pages
 

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Page 69 - Aries the Ram, Taurus the Bull, Gemini the Twins, Cancer the Crab, Leo the Lion, Virgo the Virgin, Libra the Balance, Scorpio the Scorpion, Sagittarius the Archer, Capricornus the Goat, Aquarius the Waterbearer, and Pisces the Fishes...
Page 10 - A Circle is a plane figure bounded by a curved line every point of which is equally distant from a point within called the center.
Page 14 - A sphere is a solid, bounded by one continued convex surface, every point of which is equally distant from a point within, called the centre.
Page 218 - Lepaute was such, that, without her, we never could have dared to undertake this enormous labor, in which it was necessary to calculate the distance of each of the two planets, Jupiter and Saturn, from the comet, and their attraction upon that body, separately, for every successive degree, and for one hundred and fifty years.
Page 223 - Towards the morning of the 13th of November, 1799, we witnessed a most extraordinary scene of shooting meteors. Thousands of bodies and falling stars succeeded each other during four hours. Their direction was very regular from north to south. From the beginning of the phenomenon there was not a space in the firmament equal in extent to three diameters of the moon which was not filled every instant with bodies or falling stars. All the meteors left luminous traces or phosphorescent bands behind them,...
Page 70 - Hence the latitude of a heavenly body is its distance from the ecliptic, measured on a secondary to the ecliptic ; and like latitude on the earth, it can never exceed ninety degrees.
Page 33 - I was sure of my discovery ; what, sixteen years ago, I urged as a thing to be sought; that for which I joined Tycho Brahe, for which I settled in Prague, for which I have devoted the best part of my life to astronomical contemplations ; — at length I have brought to light, and have recognised its truth beyond my most sanguine expectations.
Page 82 - ... the inclination of the axis of the earth to the plane of the ecliptic, and partly to the different positions in which a spectator is placed in different zones of the globe.
Page 34 - If you forgive me, I rejoice, if you are angry, I can bear it ; the die is cast, the book is written ; to be read either now or by posterity, I care not which ; it may well wait a century for a reader, as God has waited six thousand years for an observer.
Page 43 - A planet is said to be in conjunction with the sun when it is seen in the same part of the heavens with the sun.

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