394 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



than the value commonly adopted ; and he concludes that we may assume 

 with advantage 8 /A 5000, corresponding to a distance from that luminary of 

 80,160,000 statute miles. 



CHARTS OF THE ECLIPTIC. 



Some time ago, on the proposition of Lalande, the Academy of Berlin 

 undertook the first chart of the ecliptic. Their earliest reward was the dis- 

 covery of the fifth small planet by Mr. Hencke, of Driessen. Toward 1847, 

 Mr. Valz, of Marseilles, developed a plan, the execution of which would 

 lead to the detection of all the planets in the zodiac. Mr. Chacornac, then 

 studying astronomy with Mr. Yalz, immediately applied himself to these 

 new charts of the ecliptic. Two months afterwards, Sept. 1852, he discov- 

 ered a new planet. England and Ireland engaged in the same direction; 

 Hind and Cooper were soon to distance the French astronomers. However, 

 Chacornac, who meanwhile had been attached to the observatory of Paris, 

 continued his charts. They have just been published at the expense of that 

 observatory. They will be more complete than the former, and quadruple 

 the dimensions of those of Berlin, the scale being fifty millimetres for each 

 celestial degree. 



These charts contain all the stars of the twelfth magnitude and many of the 

 thirteenth magnitude; they extend above and below the ecliptic to 5 of 

 declination. Their form is square. The number of stars inscribed on them 

 already exceeds 125,000. 



OBSERVATIONS ON SOLAR SPOTS. 



In a recent number of the " Transactions of the Royal Astronomical So- 

 ciety," Mr. R. C. Carrington gives a notice of his solar spot observations : 



" Dui'ing the past tliree years the surface of the sun has exhibited a com- 

 parative state of quiescence, the outbreak of spots being few and often far 

 between, the spots themselves being for the most part small." 



But the epoch of least action is now passed. From the observations made 

 during 1855 and '56, which fix the date of minimum with some degree of 

 certainty, it appears that the date of the minimum of energy, as exhibited 

 by the spots, may be assigned with tolerable certainty to the beginning of 

 the month of February, 1856 ; the ratios increasing slowly and perceptibly 

 from that time. The year 1856 was characterized by the rather frequent 

 occurrence of low south spots the latitudes 27 and 35 south having been 

 more than once visited. As a general remark, when an outbreak occurs on 

 a parallel not previously affected for several months, it is mostly found that 

 two or three other outbreaks succeed at moderate intervals of time not, 

 however, at the corresponding longitudes, when the rotation of the earth is 

 allowed for; this being a subject for further investigation. 



OCCULTATION OF A STAR BY A COMET. 



By a communication from Dr. G. B. Donati, of Florence, published in the 

 Astronomische Nachrichten, of June 30, it appears that this very rare phenom- 

 enon was observed by him on the 21st of April. Comets have several times 

 been seen to pass over stars, but the light of the stars has usually been but 

 little, if at all, diminished, even by the nucleus on this occasion, however, 

 it was otherwise. The star, however, was of the twelfth magnitude, or so 



