CHAPTER IX 



ASTRO-PHYSICS 



For who so list into the heavens looke, 

 And search the courses of the rowling spheares, 

 Shall find that from the point where first they tooke 

 Their setting forth, in these few thousand yeares 

 They all are wandred much ; that plaine appeares : 



• •••••• 



Ne is that same great glorious lampe of light, 

 That doth enlumine all these lesser fyres. 

 In better case, ne keepes his course more right, 

 But is miscaried with the other Spheres : 

 For since the terme of fourteene hundred yeres, 

 That learned Ptolomas his hight did take, 

 He is declyned from that marke of theirs 

 Nigh thirtie minutes to the Southern lake ; 

 That makes me feare in time he will us quite forsake. 

 — Spenser, The Faerie Queene^ Book V. 



The origins of the ancient science of astronomy 

 are lost in the mists of the past. Unlike some of 

 the subjects we have discussed in this volume, 

 its phenomena are familiar to the most unobservant 

 of mankind, and some of these phenomena, in the 

 apparently unfailing regularity of their manifesta- 

 tion, have served as measurers of time and fore- 

 warners of seasons during immemorial ages. 



The recognition of the possibility of slow 

 change in this regularity, and the attempt to detect 

 such change by careful observation, are also an 

 old story, while unusual manifestations, such as 

 comets and eclipses, were, till comparatively recent 



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