Annales of the Dudley Observatory, Volume 1

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Argus Company, printers, 1866 - Astronomy
 

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Page xlvii - Behind him cast. The broad circumference Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views At evening, from the top of Fesole, Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, 290 Rivers or mountains in her spotty globe.
Page xlvii - There it was that I found and visited the famous Galileo, grown old, a prisoner to the Inquisition, for thinking in astronomy otherwise than the Franciscan and Dominican licensers thought.
Page xxxi - Antarctic pole, the eternal sun strikes twelve at noon, and the glorious constellations, far up in the everlasting belfries of the skies, chime twelve at midnight; twelve for the pale student over his flickering lamp ; twelve amid the flaming wonders of Orion's belt, if he crosses the meridian at that fated hour ; twelve by the weary couch of languishing humanity ; twelve in the star-paved courts of the empyrean ; twelve for the heaving tides of the ocean ; twelve for the weary arm of labor; twelve...
Page lv - Everything around was wrapt in darkness and hushed in silence, broken only by what seemed at that hour the unearthly clank and rush of the train. It was a mild, serene, midsummer's night — the sky was without a cloud — the winds were whist. The moon, then in the last quarter, had just risen, and the stars shone with a spectral lustre but little affected by her presence.
Page xxxix - Prince told him that he had a crew of twelve men, every one of whom could take and work a lunar observation as well, for all practical purposes, as Sir Isaac Newton himself, were he alive.
Page xlviii - There are occasions in life in which a great mind lives years of rapt enjoyment in a moment. I can fancy the emotions of Galileo when, first raising the newly-constructed telescope to the heavens, he saw fulfilled the grand prophecy of Copernicus and beheld the planet Venus crescent like the moon. It was such another moment as that when the immortal printers of Mentz and...
Page lv - Such was the glorious spectacle as I entered the train. As we proceeded, the timid approach of twilight became more perceptible; the intense blue of the sky began to soften; the smaller stars, like little children, went first to rest; the sisterbeams of...
Page xlviii - Cracow,) beheld the shores of San Salvador — like that when the law of gravitation first revealed itself to the intellect of Newton — like that when Franklin saw by the stiffening fibres of the hempen cord of his kite, that he held the lightning in his grasp— like that when Leverrier received back from Berlin the tidings that the predicted planet was found. Yes, noble Galileo, thou art right, E pur si muove.
Page xlvi - There is much in every way in the city of Florence to excite the curiosity, to kindle the imagination and to gratify the taste. Sheltered on the north by the vine-clad hills of Fiesole, whose Cyclopean walls carry back the antiquary to ages before the Roman, before the Etruscan, power, the flowery city (Fiorenza) covers the sunny banks of the Arno with its stately palaces. Dark and frowning piles of mediaeval structure ; a majestic dome the prototype of St.
Page li - You •will rejoice with me that the great nebula in Orion has yielded to the powers of our incomparable telescope! . . . It should be borne in mind, that this nebula, and that of Andromeda [which has been also resolved at Cambridge], are the last strong-holds of the nebular theory.

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