Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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I Pursued This Task Carefully In Both Hemispheres, At Sea, And
During My Abode At Lima, At Guayaquil, And At Mexico.
Nearly half a
century has now elapsed since La Caille examined that region of the
sky which is invisible in Europe.
The stars near the south pole are
usually observed with so little perseverance and attention, that
the greatest changes may take place in the intensity of their light
and their own motion, without astronomers having the slightest
knowledge of them. I think I have remarked changes of this kind in
the constellation of the Crane and in that of the Ship. I compared,
at first with the naked eye, the stars which are not very distant
from each other, for the purpose of classing them according to the
method pointed out by Herschel, in a paper read to the Royal
Society of London in 1796. I afterwards employed diaphragms
diminishing the aperture of the telescope, and coloured and
colourless glasses placed before the eye-glass. I moreover made use
of an instrument of reflexion calculated to bring simultaneously
two stars into the field of the telescope, after having equalized
their light by receiving it with more or fewer rays at pleasure,
reflected by the silvered part of the mirror. I admit that these
photometric processes are not very precise; but I believe the last,
which perhaps had never before been employed, might he rendered
nearly exact, by adding a scale of equal parts to the moveable
frame of the telescope of the sextant. It was by taking the mean of
a great number of valuations, that I saw the relative intensity of
the light of the great stars decrease in the following manner:
Sirius, Canopus, a Centauri, Acherner, b Centauri, Fomalhaut,
Rigel, Procyon, Betelgueuse, e of the Great Dog, d of the Great
Dog, a of the Crane, a of the Peacock. These experiments will
become more interesting when travellers shall have determined anew,
at intervals of forty or fifty years, some of those changes which
the celestial bodies seem to undergo, either at their surface or
with respect to their distances from our planetary system.
After having made astronomical observations with the same
instruments, in our northern climates and in the torrid zone, we
are surprised at the effect produced in the latter (by the
transparency of the air, and the less extinction of light), on the
clearness with which the double stars, the satellites of Jupiter,
or certain nebulae, present themselves. Beneath a sky equally
serene in appearance, it would seem as if more perfect instruments
were employed; so much more distinct and well defined do the
objects appear between the tropics. It cannot be doubted, that at
the period when equinoctial America shall become the centre of
extensive civilization, physical astronomy will make immense
improvements, in proportion as the skies will be explored with
excellent glasses, in the dry and hot climates of Cumana, Coro, and
the island of Margareta. I do not here mention the ridge of the
Cordilleras, because, with the exception of some high and nearly
barren plains in Mexico and Peru, the very elevated table-lands, in
which the barometric pressure is from ten to twelve inches less
than at the level of the sea, have a misty and extremely variable
climate.
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