Astronomy of To-day: A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language. Cecil Goodrich Julius Dolmage

mathematics is perhaps responsible for the idea that some kind of difference does exist; but mathematical processes are, in effect, no more than ordinary logic in concentrated form, the shorthand of reasoning, so to speak. I have attempted in the following pages to take the main facts and theories of Astronomy out of those mathematical forms which repel the general reader, and to present them in the ordinary language of our workaday world.

      The few diagrams introduced are altogether supplementary, and are not connected with the text by any wearying cross-references. Each diagram is complete in itself, being intended to serve as a pictorial aid, in case the wording of the text should not have perfectly conveyed the desired meaning. The full page illustrations are also described as adequately as possible at the foot of each.

      As to the coloured frontispiece, this must be placed in a category by itself. It is the work of the artist as distinct from the scientist.

      The book itself contains incidentally a good deal of matter concerned with the Astronomy of the past, the introduction of which has been found necessary in order to make clearer the Astronomy of our time.

      It would be quite impossible for me to enumerate here the many sources from which information has been drawn. But I acknowledge my especial indebtedness to Professor F.R. Moulton's Introduction to Astronomy (Macmillan, 1906), to the works on Eclipses of the late Rev. S.J. Johnson and of Mr. W.T. Lynn, and to the excellent Journals of the British Astronomical Association. Further, for those grand questions concerned with the Stellar Universe at large, I owe a very deep debt to the writings of the famous American astronomer, Professor Simon Newcomb, and of our own countryman, Mr. John Ellard Gore; to the latter of whom I am under an additional obligation for much valuable information privately rendered.

      In my search for suitable illustrations, I have been greatly aided by the kindly advice of Mr. W. H. Wesley, the Assistant Secretary of the Royal Astronomical Society. To those who have been so good as to permit me to reproduce pictures and photographs, I desire to record my best thanks as follows:—To the French Artist, Mdlle. Andrée Moch; to the Astronomer Royal; to Sir David Gill, K.C.B., LL.D., F.R.S.; to the Council of the Royal Astronomical Society; to Professor E.B. Frost, Director of the Yerkes Observatory; to M.P. Puiseux, of the Paris Observatory; to Dr. Max Wolf, of Heidelberg; to Professor Percival Lowell; to the Rev. Theodore E.R. Phillips, M.A., F.R.A.S.; to Mr. W.H. Wesley; to the Warner and Swasey Co., of Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.A.; to the publishers of Knowledge, and to Messrs. Sampson, Low & Co. For permission to reproduce the beautiful photograph of the Spiral Nebula in Canes Venatici (Plate XXII.), I am indebted to the distinguished astronomer, the late Dr. W.E. Wilson, D.Sc., F.R.S., whose untimely death, I regret to state, occurred in the early part of this year.

      Finally, my best thanks are due to Mr. John Ellard Gore, F.R.A.S., M.R.I.A., to Mr. W.H. Wesley, and to Mr. John Butler Burke, M.A., of Cambridge, for their kindness in reading the proof-sheets.

      CECIL G. DOLMAGE.

      London, S.W.,

       August 4, 1908.

      PREFATORY NOTE TO THE

       SECOND EDITION

      The author of this book lived only long enough to hear of the favour with which it had been received, and to make a few corrections in view of the second edition which it has so soon reached.

       December 1908.

LIST OF DIAGRAMS

       Table of Contents

FIG.		PAGE
1.	The Ptolemaic Idea of the Universe	19
2.	The Copernican Theory of the Solar System	21
3.	Total and Partial Eclipses of the Moon	64
4.	Total and Partial Eclipses of the Sun	67
5.	"Baily's Beads"	70
6.	Map of the World on Mercator's Projection, showing a portion of the progress of the Total Solar Eclipse Of August 30, 1905, across the surface of the Earth	81
7.	The "Ring with Wings"	87
8.	The Various Types of Telescope	113
9.	The Solar Spectrum	123
10.	A Section through the Sun, showing how the Prominences rise from the Chromosphere	131
11.	Orbit and Phases of an Inferior Planet	148
12.	The "Black Drop"	153
13.	Summer and Winter	176
14.	Orbit and Phases of the Moon	184
15.	The Rotation of the Moon on her Axis	187
16.	Laplace's "Perennial Full Moon"	191
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