14 EDWARD EMERSON BARNARD— FROST [MbM0IBS [ vo A l T xx a i; 



too faint for moderate instruments. It may seem a little singular that the large number of lone 

 exposures made by Mr. Barnard on the Milky Way did not lead to the discovery of other new 

 comets ; but such was the case, and we may well believe that this possibility was not overlooked 

 by one to whom comets had meant so much in his earlier career. In addition to those already 

 mentioned, he was the first to observe, at their predicted return, Encke's comet in 1914 and Pons- 

 Winnecke in 1921. On a plate taken while he was at Mount Wilson in 1905, he found, some 

 months later, the impression of a comet, which received the name 1905 f, but was not observed 

 elsewhere. 



In spite of Professor Barnard's passion for exact measurement, he still regarded his splen- 

 did pictures rather from the point of view of a photographer than from that of an expert in 

 measurement; of course, whenever it was necessary he obtained the positions of comets or other 

 objects on the negatives, but in a general way he had these two distinct attitudes of mind in 

 his work. He was somewhat reluctant to feel that the photographic procedure in astronomy 

 could in many cases supersede the older visual methods for which, in some respects, a much 

 higher degree of expert skill was necessary. His collection of some 1,400 negatives of comets 

 contains material on which a vast amount of measurement could be made, and we trust that this 

 will soon be done in the study of the peculiar internal motions of comets and their tails. The 

 negatives of the Milky Way and of fields of the sky taken by Professor Barnard at Yerkes 

 Observatory number about 3,500, in addition to about 500 taken by him at Mount Wilson. These 

 constitute a rich field for investigation of stellar motions, for discovery of variable stars, and 

 for statistical studies of the structure of the universe. It is hoped that these plates, which 

 extend over nearly a score of years, may soon be investigated under the "blink" comparator 

 for motions and variables, and it is certain that the full study of this splendid series of photo- 

 graphs will bring to light many important facts. 



Occasionally Mr. Barnard had time to investigate pairs of plates under the "blink" 

 comparator; thus, on confronting a plate taken in May, 1916, with one of the same field he 

 had obtained with the Willard lens in August, 1894, he discovered the star in Ophiuchus having 

 a proper motion of 10".3 per year, the greatest proper motion thus far detected. This motion 

 was, in fact, so unexpectedly large as to make the discovery very difficult, but the plates were 

 numerous enough to confirm its reality. The position of the object, familiarly known by 

 our staff as Gilpin, was carefully measured by Mr. Barnard with the filar micrometer. Its 

 parallax was investigated here and at other observatories and was found to be 0".53, corre- 

 sponding to a distance of 6.1 light years, thus making this dwarf the nearest star, after the 

 system of Alpha Centauri. With the large scale of the 40-inch telescope, photographs taken a 

 week apart make the proper motion evident and measurable! 



Professor Barnard was deeply interested in eclipses of the sun, and he secured with a 

 visual lens some excellent photographs of the corona at the total eclipse of January 1, 1889, at 

 The Willows, a point in California not far from Mount Hamilton. 



In 1900, at the station of the Yerkes Observatory, at Wadesboro, N. C, he was again 

 favored with a clear sky and secured excellent photographs with the horizontal telescope of 

 61}/£ feet focus, but here he denied himself the privilege of a direct view of the corona, remain- 

 ing inside the spacious camera with Mr. Ritchey to assure the accuracy of the exposures and 

 the perfection of the result. They saw the corona only as it was projected on the photographic 

 film. 



Mr. Barnard was invited to join the large expedition to Sumatra organized by the United 

 States Naval Observatory for the total eclipse of May 18, 1901. His station was at Solok, 

 and he planned every detail with the greatest of care for photographs of the corona on a very 

 large scale. The duration of totality was very long, nearly a maximum of six minutes. It 

 was tragic that a thick blanket of clouds prevented him from making any observations at 

 that time. He was absent from the observatory for about six months, and this further deprived 

 him of the opportunity of observing Nova Persei when it was bright. 



He was greatly interested in the eclipse of June-8, 1918, and made a trip of inspection with 

 the writer in September, 1917, to select suitable stations in Wyoming and Colorado. He 



