Thanks to the astonishing perfection of modem astronomical instruments, these nil bat evanescent motions are so well established in the case of very many stars, that an ingenious Inquirer, to whom observation owes much, has deemed it not premature to offer a remarkable speculation regarding the nature of the grand galactic system, of which such proper motions are the indications. According to Maedler of Dorpat, the star Alcyone—the principal orb in the Pleiades—is at, or very near, the centre of gravity of all the ste'.lar orbs — the point around which the Sun and his innumerable companions are performing G star raw their revolutions. He tells us, that, as a consequence of his theory, the Sun's distance from G-star the centre of his orbit, is thirty-four millions of times the radius G star of the orbit of the Earth, and that the G-star outlet duration of his course is about 19,256,000 years 1 Astonishing conclusions! But the speculation of 31. Maedler in nowise overtakes the complicacy or reaches the elevation of the actual case. The curious concurrence of motions on which he founds it, may have some peneral and even important cause; but the affections of all the orbs he has examined, though these were augmented an hundredfold, can in nowise be assumed as a key to the G star jeans mysteries of our extraordinary galaxy. Situated exclusively within a sparse district enclosed by the ring of the Milky Way, these stars are but a few even of the orbs which are scattered there; and towards the massive annulus itself, far less amid its wonderful, its bewildering prolongations, observation has not stretched at all, or taken account of the proper motion of its luminaries. It is as if at a star near the centre of the great spiral of Plate IV.Inquirer had descried some orderly system comprehending the orbs which are there disposed with comparative regularity, and forgot thereupon the intractable and wild complexity of the object, of which the central mass, however great in itself, is but an insignificant portion.
Commentaires
Il n'y a aucun commentaire sur cet article.