A Short History of Astronomy, Arthur Berry [large screen ebook reader .TXT] 📗

from different stars. This Herschel effected by using telescopes of different sizes. If the same star is observed with two reflecting telescopes of the same construction but of different sizes, then the light transmitted by the telescope to the eye is proportional to the area of the mirror which collects the light, and hence to the square of the diameter of the mirror. Hence the apparent brightness of a star as viewed through a telescope is proportional on the one hand to the inverse square of the distance, and on the other to the square of the diameter of the mirror of the telescope; hence the distance of the star is, as it were, exactly counterbalanced by the diameter of the mirror of the telescope. For example, if one star viewed in a telescope with an eight-inch mirror and another viewed in the great telescope with a four-foot mirror appear equally bright, then the second star is—on the fundamental assumption—six times as far off.

In the same way the size of the mirror necessary to make a star just visible was used by Herschel as a measure of the distance of the star, and it was in this sense that he constantly referred to the “space-penetrating power” of his telescope. On this assumption he estimated the faintest stars visible to the naked eye to be about twelve times as remote as one of the brightest stars, such as Arcturus, while Arcturus if removed to 900 times its present distance would just be visible in the 20-foot telescope which he commonly used, and the 40-foot would penetrate about twice as far into space.

Towards the end of his life (1817) Herschel made an attempt to compare statistically his two assumptions of uniform distribution in space and of uniform actual brightness, by counting the number of stars of each degree of apparent brightness and comparing them with the numbers that would result from uniform distribution in space if apparent brightness depended only on distance. The inquiry only extended as far as stars visible to the naked eye and to the brighter of the telescopic stars, and indicated the existence of an excess of the fainter stars of these classes, so that either these stars are more closely packed in space than the brighter ones, or they are in reality smaller or less luminous than the others; but no definite conclusions as to the arrangement of the stars were drawn.

259. Intimately connected with the structure of the sidereal system was the question of the distribution and nature of nebulae (cf. figs. 100, 102, facing pp. 397, 400) and star clusters (cf. fig. 104, facing p. 405). When Herschel began his work rather more than 100 such bodies were known, which had been discovered for the most part by the French observers Lacaille (chapter X., § 223) and Charles Messier (1730-1817). Messier may be said to have been a comet-hunter by profession; finding himself liable to mistake nebulae for comets, he put on record (1781) the positions of 103 of the former. Herschel’s discoveries—carried out much more systematically and with more powerful instrumental appliances—were on a far larger scale. In 1786 he presented to the Royal Society a catalogue of 1,000 new nebulae and clusters, three years later a second catalogue of the same extent, and in 1802 a third comprising 500. Each nebula was carefully observed, its general appearance as well as its position being noted and described, and to obtain a general idea of the distribution of nebulae on the sky the positions were marked on a star map. The differences in brightness and in apparent structure led to a division into eight classes; and at quite an early stage of his work (1786) he gave a graphic account of the extraordinary varieties in form which he had noted:—

“I have seen double and treble nebulae, variously arranged; large ones with small, seeming attendants; narrow but much extended, lucid nebulae or bright dashes; some of the shape of a fan, resembling an electric brush, issuing from a lucid point; others of the cometic shape, with a seeming nucleus in the center; or like cloudy stars, surrounded with a nebulous atmosphere; a different sort again contain a nebulosity of the milky kind, like that wonderful inexplicable phenomenon about θ Orionis; while others shine with a fainter mottled kind of light, which denotes their being resolvable into stars.”

260. But much the most interesting problem in classification was that of the relation between nebulae and star clusters. The Pleiades, for example, appear to ordinary eyes as a group of six stars close together, but many short-sighted people only see there a portion of the sky which is a little brighter than the adjacent region; again, the nebulous patch of light, as it appears to the ordinary eye, known as Praesepe (in the Crab), is resolved by the smallest telescope into a cluster of faint stars. In the same way there are other objects which in a small telescope appear cloudy or nebulous, but viewed in an instrument of greater power are seen to be star clusters. In particular Herschel found that many objects which to Messier were purely nebulous appeared in his own great telescopes to be undoubted clusters, though others still remained nebulous. Thus in his own words:—

“Nebulae can be selected so that an insensible gradation shall take place from a coarse cluster like the Pleiades down to a milky nebulosity like that in Orion, every intermediate step being represented.”

These facts suggested obviously the inference that the difference between nebulae and star clusters was merely a question of the power of the telescope employed, and accordingly Herschel’s next sentence is:—

“This tends to confirm the hypothesis that all are composed of stars more or less remote.”

The idea was not new, having at any rate been suggested, rather on speculative than on scientific grounds, in 1755 by Kant, who had further suggested that a single nebula or star cluster is an assemblage of stars comparable in magnitude and structure with the whole of those which constitute the Milky Way and the other separate stars which we see. From this point of view the sun is one star in a cluster, and every nebula which we see is a system of the same order. This “island universe” theory of nebulae, as it has been called, was also at first accepted by Herschel, so that he was able once to tell Miss Burney that he had discovered 1,500 new universes.

Herschel, however, was one of those investigators who hold theories lightly, and as early as 1791 further observation had convinced him that these views were untenable, and that some nebulae at least were essentially distinct from star clusters. The particular object which he quotes in support of his change of view was a certain nebulous star—that is, a body resembling an ordinary star but surrounded by a circular halo gradually diminishing in brightness.

“Cast your eye,” he says, “on this cloudy star, and the result will be no less decisive.... Your judgement, I may venture to say, will be, that the nebulosity about the star is not of a starry nature.”

If the nebulosity were due to an aggregate of stars so far off as to be separately indistinguishable, then the central body would have to be a star of almost incomparably greater dimensions than an ordinary star; if, on the other hand, the central body were of dimensions comparable with those of an ordinary star, the nebulosity must be due to something other than a star cluster. In either case the object presented features markedly different from those of a star cluster of the recognised kind; and of the two alternative explanations Herschel chose the latter, considering the nebulosity to be “a shining fluid, of a nature totally unknown to us.” One exception to his earlier views being thus admitted, others naturally followed by analogy, and henceforward he recognised nebulae of the “shining fluid” class as essentially different from star clusters, though it might be impossible in many cases to say to which class a particular body belonged.

The evidence accumulated by Herschel as to the distribution of nebulae also shewed that, whatever their nature, they could not be independent of the general sidereal system, as on the “island universe” theory. In the first place observation soon shewed him that an individual nebula or cluster was usually surrounded by a region of the sky comparatively free from stars; this was so commonly the case that it became his habit while sweeping for nebulae, after such a bare region had passed through the field of his telescope, to warn his sister to be ready to take down observations of nebulae. Moreover, as the position of a large number of nebulae came to be known and charted, it was seen that, whereas clusters were common near the Milky Way, nebulae which appeared incapable of resolution into clusters were scarce there, and shewed on the contrary a decided tendency to be crowded together in the regions of the sky most remote from the Milky Way—that is, round the poles of the galactic circle (§ 258). If nebulae were external systems, there would of course be no reason why their distribution on the sky should shew any connection either with the scarcity of stars generally or with the position of the Milky Way.

It is, however, rather remarkable that Herschel did not in this respect fully appreciate the consequences of his own observations, and up to the end of his life seems to have considered that some nebulae and clusters were external “universes,” though many were part of our own system.

261. As early as 1789 Herschel had thrown out the idea that the different kinds of nebulae and clusters were objects of the same kind at different stages of development, some “clustering power” being at work converting a diffused nebula into a brighter and more condensed body; so that condensation could be regarded as a sign of “age.” And he goes on:—

“This method of viewing the heavens seems to throw them into a new kind of light. They are now seen to resemble a luxuriant garden, which contains the greatest variety of productions, in different flourishing beds; and one advantage we may at least reap from it is, that we can, as it were, extend the range of our experience to an immense duration. For, to continue the simile I have borrowed from the vegetable kingdom, is it not almost the same thing, whether we live successively to witness the germination, blooming, foliage, fecundity, fading, withering and corruption of a plant, or whether a vast number of specimens, selected from every stage through which the plant passes in the course of its existence, be brought at once to our view?”

His change of opinion in 1791 as to the nature of nebulae led to a corresponding modification of his views of this process of condensation. Of the star already referred to (§ 260) he remarked that its nebulous envelope “was more fit to produce a star by its condensation than to depend upon the star for its existence.” In 1811 and 1814 he published a complete theory of a possible process whereby the shining fluid constituting a diffused nebula might gradually condense—the denser portions of it being centres of attraction—first into a denser nebula or compressed star cluster, then into one or more nebulous stars, lastly into a single star or group of stars. Every supposed stage in this process was abundantly illustrated from the records of actual nebulae and clusters which he had observed.

In the latter paper he also for the first time recognised that the clusters in and near the Milky Way really belonged to it, and were not independent systems that happened to lie in the same direction as seen by us.

262. On another allied point Herschel also changed his