A New Manual of the Elements of Astronomy: Descriptive and Mathematical ...

Front Cover
Ivison, Phinney, Blakeman & Company, 1870 - Astronomy - 284 pages
 

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

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 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 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 201 - seems above all to confirm the idea of an intimate relation between all the minor planets; it is, that, if their orbits are figured under the form of material rings, these rings will be found so entangled, that it would be possible, by means of one among them taken at hazard, to lift up all the rest.
Page 11 - The circumference of a circle is supposed to be divided into 360 equal parts, called degrees; each degree into 60 minutes, and each minute into 60 seconds. Degrees, minutes, and seconds are designated by the characters °, ', ". Thus 23° 14' 35" is read 23 degrees, 14 minutes, and 35 seconds.
Page 78 - Were it not for the reflective and scattering power of the atmosphere, no objects would be visible to us out of direct sunshine; every shadow of a passing cloud would be pitchy darkness ; the stars would be visible all day, and every apartment, into which the sun had not direct admission, would be involved in nocturnal obscurity.
Page 235 - ... the story of Medusa, whose golden hair Minerva turned into snakes, and of the winged horse which sprung from the blood which gushed out in striking off Medusa's head...
Page 72 - Elevate the pole as many degrees above the horizon as are equal to the latitude of the place, and screw the quadrant of altitude on the brass meridian, over that latitude; bring the sun's place in the ecliptic to the brass meridian, and set the index of the...

Bibliographic information