230 Olservations on the new celestial Body 



6ut loss of time be turned alternately either to this or to the 

 Asteroid, I found that the disk of the latter, if it were real, 

 would he about one-sixth of the former, when viewed with 

 a magnifying power of 460. The spurious nature of the 

 ^steroidal disk, however, was soon manifested by an in- 

 crease of the magnifying power, which would not propor^ 

 tionally increase its diameter as it increased that of the 

 planet ; and a real diek of the asteroid still remains unseen 

 with a power of 636. 



May 23. The new star has advanced, and its motioti i$ 

 direct; its situation with respect to the two small stars a b, 

 is given in figure 4. 



Its apparent disk with a magnifier of 460 is about 5- of 

 6-tenths of a second ; but this is evidently a spurious ap* 

 pearance, because higher powers destroy the proportion il 

 bears to a real disk when equally magnified. The air is not 

 sufficiently pure this evening to use large telescopes. 



May 24* With a magnifying power of 577 I compared 

 the appearance of the Georgian planet to that of the asteroid, 

 and with this power the diameter of the visible disk of the 

 latter was about one 9th or 10th part of the former. The 

 apparent disk of the small star near /3 Leonis, which has 

 been mentioned bpfore, had an equal comparativ^e magni- 

 tude, and probably the disks of the asteroid and of the stat 

 it resembled are equally spurious. 



The 20 feet reflector, with many different magnifying 

 powers, gave still the same result; and being already con» 

 vinced of the inipossibility, in the present situation of the 

 asteroid, which is above two months past the ojiposition, to 

 obtain a better view of its diameter, I used this instrument 

 chiefly to ascertain whether, any nebulosity or atmosphere 

 might be seen about it. Fc^r this purpose the valuable quan- 

 tity of light collected by an aperture of 1 ST inches directly 

 received by an eye-glas> of ihe fropt-view without a seconcj 

 reflection, proved of eminent use, and gave me the diameter 

 of this asteroid entirely free from all nebulous or atmospheric 

 appearances. 



Tlie result of these observations is, that we now are in 



posgessipi^ 



