Abstract
LONDON Royal Astronomical Society, January 12.—Mr. William Huggins, D.C.L., president, in the chair.—Mr. Robert John Baillie, Mr. Henry Vere Barclay, the Rev. Daniel Dutton, Mr. Samuel Haywood, Dr. Louis Stomeyer Little, Mr. Richard Pearce, Commander William James Lloyd Wharton, R.N., H. M. surveying ship Fawn, and Mr. Jesse Young, were elected Fellows of the Society.—A paper by Mr. Marth giving an ephemeris for the satellites of Uranus for the year 1877, was read. This is one of a series of papers which Mr. Marth has presented to the Society giving ephemerides useful for physical observations of the major planets and their satellites. It was remarked by the president that these ephemerides involve much labour in their construction, and the astronomical world is greatly indebted to Mr. Marth for their production.—A paper by Prof. Harkness on the theory of the horizontal photoheliograph was read. The instrument consists of a heliostat and a long focussed object-glass, in the principal focus of which the negatives are taken; the distortion produced by secondary magnifiers is thus avoided, and very accurate means are adopted for determining the shrinkage of the collodion film upon the plate and the accurate orientation of the photograph.—Mr. Wentworth Erck read a paper on an improved eye-piece for viewing the sun. His method is to use a small glass prism as a reflector which is placed within the image of the sun, so that only a portion of the rays from apart of the disc are reflected into the eye-piece at any one time; the effects of healing are thus reduced to a minimum, and for viewing small areas of the sun the eye-piece is preferable to that suggested by Mr. Dawes in which the light of the whole image is reflected and the small area to be observed is viewed through a diaphragm which is exposed to the heating effects of the reflected rays.—A paper by Mr. Knott was presented to the society; it contains a catalogue which he has been some years in preparing, and gives a very large number of micrometrical measures of double stars which have been made with a very fine eight-inch refracting telescope formerly the property of Mr. Dawes.
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Societies and Academies . Nature 15, 286–288 (1877). https://doi.org/10.1038/015286b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/015286b0