Observations have been made at Greenwich, both on Venus and on the moon, by the new method, with results entirely satisfactory. The method shows that Venus is receding when she is known to be receding, and that she is approaching when she is known to be approaching. Again, the method shows no signs of approach or recession in the moon’s case. It is thus in satisfactory agreement with the known facts. Of course these results are open to the objection that the observers have known beforehand what to expect, and that expectation often deceives the mind, especially in cases where the thing to be observed is not at all easy to recognize. It will presently be seen that the new method has been more satisfactorily tested, in this respect, in other ways. It may be partly due to the effect of expectation that in the case of Venus the motions of approach and recession, tested by the new method, have always been somewhat too great. A part of the excess may be due to the use of the measure of the sun’s distance, and therefore the measures of the dimensions of the solar system, in vogue before the recent transit. These measures fall short to some degree of those which result from the observations made in December, 1874, on Venus in transit, the sun’s distance being estimated at about 91,400,000 miles instead of 92,000,000 miles, which would seem to be nearer the real distance. Of course all the motions within the solar system would be correspondingly under-estimated. On the other hand, the new method would give all velocities with absolute correctness if instrumental difficulties could be overcome. The difference between the real velocities of Venus approaching and receding, and those calculated according to the present inexact estimate of the sun’s distance, is however much less than the observed discrepancy, doubtless due to the difficulties involved in the application of this most difficult method. I note the point, chiefly for the sake of mentioning the circumstance that theoretically the method affords a new means of measuring the dimensions of the solar system. Whensoever the practical application of the method has been so far improved that the rate of approach or recession of Venus, or Mercury, or Jupiter, or Saturn (any one of these planets), can be determined on any occasion, with great nicety, we can at once infer the sun’s distance with corresponding exactness. Considering that the method has only been invented ten years (setting aside Doppler’s first vague ideas respecting it), and that spectroscopic analysis as a method of exact observation is as yet little more than a quarter of a century old, we may fairly hope that in the years to come the new method, already successfully applied to measure motions of recession and approach at the rate of 20 or 30 miles per second, will be employed successfully in measuring much smaller velocities. Then will it give us a new method of measuring the great base-line of astronomical surveying—the distance of our world from the centre of the solar system.
Islands Brief
Pleasant Ways in Science — Part 64
2026-11-15 11:28:00 · The Daily Ledger
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