126 



Monday, 15th March 1847. 

 Right Rev. BISHOP TERROT, Y.P., in the Chair. 

 The following Communications were read : — 

 1. On the Course of Observation to be pursued in future at 

 the Royal Observatory of Edinburgh. By Professor C, 

 Piazzi Smyth. 



BeiiKy at present chiefly taken up with the computation of his 

 predecessor's observations, the author takes this opportunity of ex- 

 amining into what is going on in otlier Observatories ; and then en- 

 deavours, from the results of such a survey, to select some unpursued 

 branch of Astronomy, as the proper subject to which the Edinburgh 

 Observatory should be devoted ; and he dwells much on the great 

 caution to be used, in the present multiplication of astronomical ob- 

 servatories, that several of them be not working against each other 

 on the same subject ; and urges the extreme importance of first se- 

 lecting an appropriate object of research, and then following it up 

 with a constancy enduring through ages, after the manner of the 

 Greenwich Observatory, which has consequently produced i-esults of 

 such inestimable service to the promotion of the science. 



He then proceeds to describe the several observatories, and the ob- 

 jects pursued at Greenwich, the Cape of Good Hope, Cambridge, 

 Oxford, Armagh, Durham, and Liverpool ; and concludes that they 

 are all doing their work so well, that it would be quite useless for 

 any other establishment to follow in the same paths. 



But while the movements of the planets round the sun are so well 

 attended to at Greenwich, he remarks that the question of the mo- 

 tion of the sun itself amongst the stars, is equally important, is pe- 

 culiarly the business of our age to investigate, is only possible to be 

 solved by public observatories with good meridian instruments, and, 

 being unpursued elsewhere, may well be adopted as the peculiar mis- 

 sion of the Edinburgh Observatory. 



The proposed method of solving this problem is then described, 

 and consists generally in procuring accurate places of a great number 

 of stars, for three distinct epochs, during a period of thirty years ; 

 constants and fundamental points being taken, for specified reasons, 

 liom Greenwich. 



riie Edinburgh Observatory is not, however, to be wholly en- 

 grossed in this long and distant inquiry, but is also to do something 

 immediately useful for amateur asti'onomers, by fixing the abso- 



i 



