Let me first explain the source whence this extraordinary accession to our knowledge has arisen. We owe it to the astronomers at the Lick Observatory, that remarkable institution placed on the summit of Mount Hamilton in California. Many important discoveries had already been made with the noble instruments with which the famous Lick Observatory had originally been endowed by its founder; it is, however, by a recent addition to its magnificent apparatus that the discoveries have been made which are specially significant for our present purpose.
Many years ago Dr. A. A. Common, the distinguished English astronomer, constructed an exquisite reflecting telescope of three feet aperture (Fig. 8). With this telescope Dr. Common himself obtained notable results in photographing the heavens, and his success earned the award of the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society. This telescope passed into the possession of Mr. E. Crossley, of Halifax, and some time later Mr. Crossley presented it to the Lick Observatory. The great mirror, after its voyage across the Atlantic, was duly erected on the top of Mount Hamilton, and fortunately for science Professor Keeler, whose early death astronomers of both continents greatly deplore, devoted himself to the study of the heavens with its aid. He encountered many difficulties, as might perhaps be expected in such a task as he proposed. His patience and skill, however, overcame them, and though death terminated his labours when his great programme had but little more than commenced, the work he had already accomplished has led to results of the most striking character. Of the skill that he obtained in photographing celestial nebulæ we have given illustrations in Figs. 6 and 7.
[Illustration: Fig. 7.—THE DUMB-BELL NEBULA (Lick Observatory, California). (_From the Royal Astronomical Society Series._)]
It is not to the individual portraits of notable nebulæ that we are now about to refer. The most striking characteristic of the sidereal heavens is not to be found in the fact that in one part of the sky we have a brilliant Sirius, in another a Capella, and in a third a Canopus, but in the fact that the heavens wherever we may test them are strewn with incalculable myriads of stars, many of which appear faint only on account of their distance and not because they are intrinsically small. In like manner the remarkable fact with regard to the nebulæ which has been disclosed by Keeler’s memorable researches with the Crossley Reflector is the existence not alone of the great nebulæ, but of unexpected scores of thousands of small nebulæ, or rather, I should say, of nebulæ which appear small, though doubtless in many cases these objects are intrinsically quite as splendid as the Dumb-bell Nebula or the Nebula in Orion. They only seem small in consequence of being many times further from us than are the more famous objects.