MOUNTAIN OBSERVATORIES IN AMERICA AND EUROPE. !5 



Draper with an excellent telesc(ipe owned by him, of l;^-inch aperture 

 and power of 60. The second telescope employed at Summit was of 

 3-inch aperture with powers of 60 or 65 and 250. The tests were 

 made on Polaris^ Saturn, the moon, the sun, and a few double stars. 

 The results were very favoi'able for steadiness of the images : and it is 

 noteworthy that the solar image was extremely sharp and steady. 

 The excessive snowfall would unfit this station for permanent occupa- 

 tion. The same remark applies to the station first selected for the 

 Lick Observatory at Lake Tahoe. 



U. Su Coast and Geodetic Survey Station, Sherman, Wyoming 



(8335 feet). 



In 1872 the U. S. Congress appropriated the sum of $2,000 to enable 

 the Superintendent of the Coast Survey to make " astronomical ob- 

 servations at one of the highest points on the line of the Pacific rail- 

 road." During the summer of 1872 a station was occupied by a party 

 under Mr. R D. Cutts, of the Survey, and astronomical and meteoro- 

 logical observations were made. 



Mr. Cutts reports the sky as " indescribably brilliant," and the stars 

 as very steady. 



Professor C. A. Young was invited by the Coast Survey to occupy 

 this station, and spent the months of June, July, and August, 1872, at 

 Sherman, engaged in astronomical observations, chiefly spectroscopic. 

 He brought with him a 9.-i-inch equatorial by Clark, with its spectro- 

 scope. The number of good days was small — about one in three. 

 " But when the sky was clear, it was beautifully so." Many 7th mag- 

 nitude stars were visible to the naked eye. Alpha Lyrce was several 

 times observed with the naked eye from 10 to 15 minutes before sunset. 

 Most of Professor Young's work was done in the daytime on the sun, 

 but on 7 nights from 3 to 4 hours were spent in the observatory. 

 On two of the nights the seeing was perfect ; on two others, fine ; on 

 three it ranged from fair to poor. Finally, Professor Young states it 

 as his deliberate opinion that a 9.-4-inch object-glass at Sherman is just 

 about equal to a 12-inch at sea-lerel. 



It is important to remark that this expedition of Professor Young's 

 was the first one in which a telescope of considerable power was con- 

 tinuously used at a high elevation. His results, and specially his 

 spectroscopic results, soon became widely known, not only in scientific 

 circles but throughout the world. The establishment of the Lick Ob- 

 servatory on a mountain was partly due to his success, and the Lick 

 Observatory is the forerunner, and in some sense the parent, of the 

 mountain astronomical observatories of to-day. 



