Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work by Henry White Warren
page 99 of 249 (39%)
page 99 of 249 (39%)
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earth the centre, and that the sun, moon, and stars were carried
about it, as stoves around a person to warm him. They thought these strange movements of the planets were accomplished by mounting them on subsidiary eccentric wheels in the revolving crystal sphere. All that was [Page 115] needed to give them a right conception was a sinking of their world and themselves to an appropriate proportion, and an enlargement of their vision, to take in from an exalted stand-point a view of the simplicity of the perfect plan. EXPERIMENTS. Fix a rod, or tube, or telescope pointing at a star in the cast or west, and the earth's revolution will be apparent in a moment, turning the tube away from the star. Point it at stars about the north pole, and those on one side will be found going in an opposite direction from those on the other, and very much slower than those about the equator. Anyone can try the pendulum experiment who has access to some lofty place from which to suspend the ball. It was tried in Bunker Hill Monument a few years ago, and is to be tried in Paris, in the summer of 1879, with a seven-hundred-pound pendulum and a suspending wire seventy yards long. The advance and retrograde movements of planets can be illustrated by two persons walking around a centre and noticing the place where the person appears projected on the wall beyond. * * * * * PROCESSION OF STARS AND SOULS. "I stood upon the open casement, |
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