Mr Proctor in Auckland.

Thames Star, Volume XI, Issue 3744, 24 December 1880, Page 2

Mr Proctor in Auckland.

The following is part of -a lecture delivered by Mr R. A. Proctor, in Auckland, and serves to demonstrate the inconceivable immensity of space. Mr Proctor commenced by remarking upon the solemn stillness of the heavens upon a calm and starlit night, the peaceful rest, and deep quietude which seemed to pervade all creation, and the absolute changelessness of all the celestial bodies. This, however, was only fancy. If our observation extended -throughout the whole night, the various constellations would appear to have, traversed the entire expanse of the * firmament—to have journeyed from the eastern horizon to their point of disappearance in the west. This, too, however, was but an illusion produced by the diurnal revolution of our planet upon her axis. Then again it might seem as if within the compass of a year all the stars had journeyed far away from us, retnrning eventually to their original positions and ever main- | taining their course in the same beaten i track, but this also was a deceptive apI pearance- It was the earth which moved, ' and the changes in the positions of the stars were occasioned by her orbitory 1 motion. Still another phenomenon in the i observation of the stellar bodies had to be explained. The earth in pursuing her orbit round the sun had a gyratory impulse towards the Dragon, similar to the reeling motion of an immense top, and this gradually produced such a variation, that. the whole" universe ap--1 peered to shift slowly its position until it had made a complete revolution That, however, would occupy a period of 29,500 years. Though these motions of the celestial bodies were apparent only to us and not real, it was certain that each one of them, though seemingly passive,and calm were instinct with action—was the theatre of tremendous forces in their active operation. Nothing in our solar systems was at all comparable with the stupendous activity which prevailed in the star depths. Every moment produced wonderful disturbances. The faintest diminution of light in any one of the stellar orbs meant a terrible change to the second of which all the occurrences in our system during hundreds of yeannoffered not the slightest parallel. In those depths there were incessant noise—inconceivable energy—the awful roar of the hurricane, the deafening crash of the thunderbolt, the bellowing of tbe volcano, the hideous groaning which formed, so terrible an aooompaniment of the earthquake throes. Although the astronomer had been successful in notioing and accounting for some of these mighty phenomena, he had been completely vanquished in the attempt to determine, the distance of the nearest stars from us, and that, too, although he had a base line from which to measure of 180,000,000 of miles in length, being the entire space from one extremity to the other of the earth's orbit. The nearest star to us in all the heavens was supposed to be the brighter of the two suns in the constellation known as the Pointer, and by the most careful computation that could be made, it was stated to be 210,000 times further away than our Bun. The magnitude of this distance might be illustrated so as to afford us some slight idea of what it implied. Thus light, which travelled at the rate of 187,000 miles a second occupied 8£ j minutes in coming to us from the sun,, but it took no less than 3? years to come to us from the star referred to. The next! nearest star was one situated in the I Northern heavens, and so very difficult' was it to ascertain, even approximately, j its distance, that the two greatest astro*! nomers who had applied themselves to i the task had differed so materially in their I calculations that there was a discrepancy I between the two equal to the remoteness I of the star in the Pointer. That orb ex- : ceeded our own in size and lustre fully | five time, while the bright star Sirius, so far surpassed it in all the solar qualities j that if our son were carried away and placed beside it it would only shine with J a 200 th part of Sirius' lustre. Having noticed and answered Dr Hewin's ex- j ploded theory that the stars were but flaming lights set up high in the heavens for our special behoof, Mr Proctor pro* ceeded to describe and explain the meaniag of spectrum and analysis, bf means of

which the substance and nature of the celestial bodies were definitely settled. He also exhibited upon the screen a series of enlarged protographic views of various parts of the heavens, explaining the prominent features of each as he did so. He shewed that the thousand millions of suns (each the centre of a solar system) which the telescope revealed to us were but component parts of a vast stellar system, of which our group of planets formed but an insignificant speck; that there were systems of such stellar systems, "and probably again systems of systems ad infinitum. It was, too, he said, but a reasonable deduction from our knowledge that there was an order of

suns similarly constituted to our ownthat they had planets revolving around them peopled by sentient beings like ourselves—otherwise, why such an abundance of all the conditions necessary to life P While, however, the telescope, by affording us a glimpse into the immensity of the universe, filled us with awe and wonder at the intricate complexities of nature, the microscope, by allowing us to peer into another domain, astounded us no less by the sights which it presented. We saw that here also there was an infinity of life, and that the farther and the deeper our researches went the more thoroughly were we impressed with the fact that' there were still countless hosts of objects hidden from our gaze—imperceptible to our senses, aided though they were by the splendid equipment of an advanced science. The lecturer concluded by reciting some appropriate lines from one of Shelley's poems.