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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The Reddish Vapour Which At Cumana Had Spread A Mist Over The
Horizon A Little Before Sunset, Disappeared After The 7th Of
November.
The atmosphere resumed its former purity, and the
firmament appeared, at the zenith, of that deep blue tint peculiar
to climates where heat, light, and a great equality of electric
charge seem all to promote the most perfect dissolution of water in
the air.
I observed, on the night of the 7th, the immersion of the
second satellite of Jupiter. The belts of the planet were more
distinct than I had ever seen them before.
I passed a part of the night in comparing the intensity of the
light emitted by the beautiful stars which shine in the southern
sky. 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.
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