Vestiges of the natural history of creation / by Robert Chambers, with an introduction relating to the authorship of the work by Alexander Ireland.

  • Robert Chambers
Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Vestiges of the natural history of creation / by Robert Chambers, with an introduction relating to the authorship of the work by Alexander Ireland. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    43/546 page 5
    a time may come when we shall be much more in the thick of the stars of our astral system than we are now, and have of course much more brilliant nocturnal skies ; but it may be countless ages before the eyes which are to see this added resplendence shall exist. The evidence of the existence of other astral systems is much more decided than might be expected, when we consider that the nearest of them must needs be placed at a mighty interval beyond our own. The elder Herschel, directing his wonderful tube towards the sides of our system, where stars are planted most rarely, and raising the powers of the instrument to the required pitch, was enabled with awe-struck mind to see suspended in the vast empyrean astral systems, or, as he called them, firmaments, resembling our own. Like light cloudlets to a certain power of the telescope, they resolved themselves, under a greater power, into stars, though these generally seemed no larger than the finest particles of diamond dust. The general forms of these systems are various. So also are the distances, as proved by the different degrees of telescopic power necessary to bring them into view. The furthest observed by the astronomer were estimated by him as thirty-five thousand times more remote than Sirius, supposing its distance to be about twenty millions of millions of miles. More recently, the Earl of Rosse has brought a superb instrument to bear upon these distant objects, and thus levealed them in more wondrous forms than before. Many which Herschel saw only as filmy matter, spread in patches over the sky, are now found to be vast aggre- gations of stars. Many which to the elder philosopher
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3