O. MISCELLANEOUS. GO 3 



A NEW OBSERVATORY. 



A new observatory is to be commenced at once in connec- 

 tion with the University of Strasburg, of which Dr. Win- 

 necke will be the director. A refracting telescope of eight- 

 een inches' aperture has been ordered. Another new observ- 

 atory has been founded at Vienna, which will be provided 

 with the most approved instruments. Littrow, the director 

 of the present institution in that city, publishes an interest- 

 ing history of the old observatory, and the work which has 

 been done in it during the past hundred years. 



MARITIME METEOROLOGY IN GERMANY. 



The newly established office for maritime meteorology in 

 Germany has been organized by placing Von Freeden at the 

 head of it. Von Freeden has for the past seven years been 

 director of the Naval Institution at Hamburg ; and his long 

 experience and well-known zeal are the best possible assur- 

 ances of the success of the new and highly important office 

 in which he has been placed. 



PRIZE ESSAY OF THE COPENHAGEN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 



The Academy of Sciences in Copenhagen announces the 

 subject for a prize essay, to be addressed to it through its 

 secretary by the end of October, 1875. It desires a memoir 

 that shall collect in chronological order the various deter- 

 minations of constant quantities that have been used in spher- 

 ical and theoretical astronomy from the time of the Ptolemies 

 down to the end of the eighteenth century. It will not be 

 necessary to submit to any critical discussion the intrinsic 

 value of the various constants, but simply to give them in as 

 complete a manner as possible. Special researches respect- 

 ing the proper motions of stars and parallaxes of stars will 

 be excluded, as also will be those relating to the satellites of 

 the exterior planets, and the elements of orbits of comets. It 

 is desired principally to obtain a complete collection of those 

 numbers that have served as the basis of earlier astronomical 

 researches. The memoir may be written in Latin, French, 

 German, Swedish, or English ; and the medal to be awarded 

 will be of gold, of the value of 320 Danish crowns. Astron. 

 Nachrkhten, LXXXIV., 47. 



