Abstract
IN his presidential address to the Royal Astronomical Society at its annual meeting on February 9, Prof. F. J. M. Stratton sketched the development of schemes of international co-operation in astronomy during the last hundred years. The first such scheme was that of the Berlin Academy for a chart and catalogue of stars down to the 10th magnitude, to be completed by a number of continental astronomers by 1828; it was actually not completed until 1858. Along the same lines were the plan of the A.G. zone catalogues drawn up in 1869, and later still the more ambitious photographic “Carte du Ciel” set on foot in Paris in 1887 and not yet completed. The founding of the “Centralstelle” for astronomical telegrams and the various activities of the Astronomische Gesell-schaft kept the Germans for many years the chief organisers of joint astronomical schemes, but after the Permanent Commission of the Carte du Ciel had been established with its occasional gatherings of astronomers at Paris, the headquarters for international astronomy of position shifted to France.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Astronomy and International Co-operation. Nature 133, 264 (1934). https://doi.org/10.1038/133264a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/133264a0