The primary view had for its support the highest mathematical authoritativeness of its era. Now, so has the secondary view. Mathematics has been as subservient to one view as the other.
Mostly our data have been suggestive, or correlative, but it may be that there are visual indications of a concave land in the sky, or of a substantial shell around this earth. There are dark places in the sky, and some of them have the look of land. They are called "dark nebulae." Some astronomers have speculated upon them, as glimpses of a limiting outline of a system as a whole. See back to Dolmage, quoted upon this subject. My own notion is of a limiting, outlining substance that I call a "shell." "Dark nebulae" have the look of bare, or starless, patches of a shell. Some of them may be formations that are projections from a shell. They hang like super-stalactites in a vast and globular cave. At least one of these appearances has the look of a mountain peak. In several books by astronomers plates of this object have appeared. See Duncan's Astronomy. It is known as the Horse-head nebula. It stands out, as a vast, sullen refusal to mix into a frenzy of phosphorescent confetti. It is a solid-looking gloom, such as, some election night, the Woolworth Building would be, if Republican, and all the rest of Broadway hysterical with a Democratic celebration. Over its summit comes light, like the fringe of dawn topping a mountain. Something is shining behind this formation, but penetrates no more than it would shine through a mountain.
It may be that relatively there are few stars— that hosts of tiny lights in the sky are reflections, upon irregularities of the shell-land, from large stars.
Among expressions that I have not developed is one that is suggested by a circumstance that astronomers consider strange. This is that some variable stars have a period of about a year. Just what variations of stars that are said to be trillions of miles away could have to do with a period upon this ultra-remote earth cannot be conceived of in orthodox terms. The suggestion is that these lights, with variations corresponding with advances and recessions of the sun, moving spirally around this almost stationary earth, are reflections of sunlight from points of land, or from lakes in extinct, or dormant craters. It may be that many variations of light that have been attributed to "companions" are tidal phenomena in celestial lakes that shine as reflections from the sun, or from other stars, which may be lakes of molten lava.
There is a formation in the constellation Cygnus that has often been noted. It is faintly luminescent, but this light, according to Prof. Hubble, is a reflection from the star Deneb. It is shaped like North America, and it is known as the America nebula. Out from its Gulf of Mexico are islands of light. One of these may be a San Salvador some day.
Like Alaska to birds from the north, the Horse-head nebula stands out from its background, like something to fly to.
Star after star after star has blazed a story, sometimes publishing tragedy on earth, illustrated with spectacles in the heavens. But, when transcribed into human language, these communications are depopularized with "determinations" and "pronouncements." So our tribes have left these narratives of fires and smokes and catastrophes to the wisemen, who have made titanic tales unintelligible with their little technical jargons. The professionals will not unprofessionalize; they will not give up their system. Where have the wisemen ever done so among the Eskimos, or the hairy Ainus, the Zulus, or the Kaffirs? Whatever we are, they are acting to keep us whatever we are, as the Zulus are kept whatever they are. We are beguiled by snoozers, who have been beaten time after time by schoolboys.
There's a fire in the sky, and ashes and smoke and dust reach this earth, as sometimes after an eruption of Vesuvius, discharges reach Paris. There may be volcanoes in a land of the sky, so close to this earth that, if intervening space be not airless and most intensely cold, an expedition could sail away in a dash to the stars that would be a bold and magnificent trifle.
Chapter 31
BESIDES THE new star, which was an object so conspicuous that it was discovered widely, except by astronomers, there was another astronomical occurrence in the month of June, 1918— an eclipse of the sun. It was observed in Oregon. We can't expect such a check up as when Coogan's Bluff and the Consolidated Gas Company get into astronomy, but Oregonians set their alarm clocks, and looked up at the sky. See Mitchell's Eclipses of the Sun, p. 67— the astronomers admitted an error of 14 seconds in their prediction.
Measurements of ordinary refinement are in hair-breadths, but a hair is coarse material to the ethereal astronomers, who use filaments spun by spiders. And just where do the astronomers get their cobwebs? This book of ours is full of mysteries, but here is something that is not one of them.
My own opinion is that an error of only 14 seconds is a very creditable approximation. But it is a huge and grotesque blunder, when compared with the fairy-like refinements that the astronomers dream are theirs, in matters that cannot be so easily checked up.
To readers who are not clear upon this point, I repeat that predictions of eclipses cannot be cited in support of conventionality against our own expressions, because, whether upon the basis that this earth moves, or is stationary, eclipses can be predicted— and Lo! come to pass. But Lo! if, looking on, there be an intelligent representative of the Consolidated Gas Company, or an Oregonian with an alarm clock, predictions aren't just exactly what they should be.
We have divided astronomers into professionals and amateurs: but, wherever there are differences there is somewhere the merging-point that demonstrates continuity. W. F. Denning represents the amateur-professional merging-point. He has never had a job— though it does not look to me that job is the right word— in an Observatory, but he has written a great deal upon astronomical matters. He is an accountant, in the city of Bristol, England. Has nothing to do with Observatories, but has a celebrated back yard. Upon the night of Aug. 20, 1920, Denning sat in his back yard, and, in surroundings that were touched up most unacademically by cats on the fences, though Observatory-like enough, with snores from back windows, he discovered Nova Cygni III. This is another instance of a new star appearing close to where there had been preceding new stars, as if all were eruptions in one region of especially active volcanic land. There were earthquakes in this period. In the United States, there were the sudden deluges that are called "cloudbursts." Upon the night of August 28th, a seismic wave drowned 200 persons, on the island of Saghalien, off the east coast of Siberia.
For four nights, astronomers of the so-called Observatories had been photographing this star. Students of phenomena of somnambulism will be interested in our data. When Denning woke up the astronomers, they looked at what they had been unconsciously doing, and learned that from the 16th of the month, this star had risen from 7th to about 3rd magnitude. A star of 3rd magnitude is a conspicuous star. In the whole sky there are (photographic magnitudes) only 111 of this size. At any one time not more than 40 of them are visible. The limit of visibility, without a telescope, is somewhere between the 6th and 7th magnitudes. So it is said. According to our data, the limit of seeing depends upon who's looking.
I wonder what ironic fellow first called these snug, little centers of inattention Observatories. He had a wit of his own, whoever he was.
Discovery of the new star, if not a comet, of Aug. 7, 1921, has been attributed to a professional wiseman (Director Campbell, of Lick Dormitory). But it was a brilliant and conspicuous appearance. Most of the new stars that professionals have discovered, or have had discovered for them, by the not very eagle-eyed females of Harvard, have been small points on photographic plates. English Mechanic, 114-211— records of observations by four amateurs, before the time of Director Campbell's "discovery." One of these observations was twenty-four hours earlier.
Sometime ago, I read an astronomer's complaint against heavy traffic near an "Observatory." Though now I have different ideas as to an astronomer's dislike for disturbance, night times, I was not so experienced then, and innocently supposed that he meant that delicate instruments were jarred.
A convention of Methodist ministers— and how agreeable it would be to note, in the midst of preciseness and purity, one of these parsons standing on his head
Or see the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 1922— upon page 400 there is a diagram.
Mistakes that I make— and errors of yours—
Contrasting with the much-advertised divinity of the astronomers.
Page 400— in the midst of a learned treatise upon "adiabatic expansions" and "convective equilibrium" is printed a diagram. It is upside down.
I attended this convention of pedantries, of course inspired by a religious faith that is mine that I'd not have to look far for a crook in its bombast, or somewhere a funny little touch of waywardness in its irreproachability, but especially I attended to pick out something of which, in this year 1922, the astronomers were boasting, to contrast with something they were doing. I picked out a long laudation upon an astronomer who had received a gold medal for predicting the motions of a star-cluster for a term of 100,000,000,000 years, to contrast with—
Sept. 20, 1922— an eclipse of the sun— see Mitchell's Eclipses of the Sun, p. 67— and the predictions by the astronomers. They made one error of 16 seconds, and another error of 20 seconds.
There are persons who do not believe in ordinary fortune tellers. Yet, without a quiver in their credulities, they read of an astronomical gypsy who tells the fortunes of a star for 100,000,000,000 years, though, according to conventionality, that star is 60 × 60 × 24 × 365 × 100,000 times farther away than is the moon, motions of which cannot be exactly foretold, unless the observations are going to be, say at Bahia de Paranagua, or somewhere in Jungaria.
The eclipse of Sept. 20, 1922, was checked up by police constables, in Australia. But the eclipse of Oct. 21, 1930, was observed at Niuafou. This time the dispatches sent by the astronomers told of "a complete success." "The eclipse began exactly as predicted."
There are records of seeming new stars that have blazed up, like spasmodic eruptions, then dying out. For Dr. Anderson's report upon one of these appearances, May 8, 1923, see Popular Astronomy, 31-422. Upon the 7th, Etna was active; earthquake in Anatolia; extraordinary rise and fall of the Mediterranean, at Gibraltar. The "Observatories" missed Dr. Anderson's observation, but at one of them a small, new star was photographed, night of May 5th. I neglected to note whether, on a photographic plate, this was immediately detected. See Pop. Astro., 31-420.
Upon Feb. 13, 1923, an increase of the star Beta Ceti was reported. There was interest in the newspapers. Maps of the sky were published. If newspapers start first-paging astronomical occurrences, putting down X-marks for stars, as well as for positions of bodies of the murdered, there will be more interest. This is dangerous to the astronomers, but so long as their technicalities hold out, they have good protection. Even so there might be inquiries into what the "Observatories" are doing, when, time after time, only amateurs are observing. The "Observatories" had of course missed this rise of Beta Ceti, but, when told by an amateur where to look, professionals at Yerkes and Juvisy confirmed the report. For the fullest account, see the Bull. Soc. Astro. de France, of this period. Upon February 22nd, a yellow dust, perhaps a discharge from an increased volcanic activity in Cetus, fell from the sky, in Westphalia (London Evening Standard, February 27). The amateur, this time, was a schoolboy, aged 16.
Night of May 27, 1925— the Rip Van Winkles of the South African "Observatory" were disturbed by an amateur. He told them that there was a new star in the southern constellation Pictor. When they were aroused, the Rips looked up and saw the new star, and then stayed awake long enough to learn that somnambulically they had, for months, been photographing it. For months it had been gleaming over the "Observatories" of four continents.
There are slits in the domes of Observatories.
The fixed grin of a clown— the slit in the dome of an Observatory.
Sept. 21, 1930— that the astronomers had ascertained the heat received from a thirteenth magnitude star to be 631 times that of the heat from the faintest star visible to the unaided eye— that this faintest visible star radiates upon the whole United States no more heat than the sun radiates upon one square yard of said U. S.
A grin in the dark— or the sardonic slit in any Observatory, night times. Most likely the inmates haven't a notion what is symbolized. But we contrast an alleged perception of 631 times the inconceivable with this item, in Popular Astronomy, 1925, p. 540:
That 44 nights before the amateur's discovery, Nova Pictoris had shone as a star of third magnitude, and had been perceived by no astronomer.
The Building That Laughs— as a modern Victor Hugo would call an Observatory with a slit in it.
Fixed grin of the clown— and, according to theatrical conventions, his head is full of seriousness.
Sept. 24, 1930— this is what came from a Building That Laughed, though its dome was full of astronomers:
That, according to spectroscopic determinations, at Mt. Wilson, a distant nebula is moving away from this earth, at a rate of 6,800 miles a second; that, upon the day of the calculations, the distance of this nebula was 75,000,000 × 60 × 60 × 24 × 365 × 186,000 miles.
To appreciate the clownishness of this, see our data for accepting that the spectroscope tells about what is told by tea leaves in a teacup— which is considerable, if one wants to be told considerable. To realize the pathos of this, think of the grinning old clown, whose gags have played out; who is driven to most extravagant antics to hold a little attention.
Our general expression is that the inmates of this earth's "Observatories" are not astronomers, but are mathematicians. Since medieval times there has never been a shake-up in this system of ancient lore, comparable with Lyellism in geology, or Darwinism in biology, or the reconstructions of thought brought about by radioactivity, in physics and chemistry. Einsteinism was a slight shock, but it is concerned with differences of minute quantities. Mathematicians are incurable. They are inert to the new, because the new is a surprise, and mathematics concerns itself with the expected. It does occur to me that there might be good results, if the next millionaire who contemplates donating a big telescope, should, instead, send around to the "Observatories" big quantities of black coffee: but such is the concordance between the twinkles of the stars and the nods of drowsy heads that I'd not much like to disturb such harmony.
