1869.] Astronomy. 95 



as the bright granules over the sun's surface could be well seen. 

 The planet appeared as a round, evenly-defined spot, with an annulus 

 of light one-third of its apparent diameter, having a well-defined 

 boundary, and appearing rather brighter than the sun's disc. Nearly 

 in the centre of the planet's disc there was a spot of light. As the 

 ring was seen when the darkest part of the neutral tint shding 

 wedge was made use of, and in fact rather better then than when the 

 shade employed was fighter, Mr. Huggins considers that the ring 

 cannot be looked upon as a mere optical effect of contrast. An 

 atmosphere round Mercury hardly seems to be a sufficient explana- 

 tion of the ring of fight. As for the point of light on the disc, that 

 is an old difficulty. Probably the fact that Stone could see no such 

 point with the great Greenwich equatorial, will lead to the opinion 

 that the appearance is connected in some way with the quality of 

 the telescope employed. 



At a recent meeting of the Eoyal Astronomical Society, the 

 Astronomer Eoyal stated that he had obtained from Dr. Miller, of 

 Cambridge, evidence confirmatory of the connection which has been 

 supposed to exist between comets and meteors. It will be remem- 

 bered that Mr. Huggins's analysis of Comet II., 1868, showed that 

 that object consisted of carbon in the state of incandescent gas. It 

 appears that there are four meteoric stones, at least, which contain 

 carbon. Of these, one fell in the south of France, one at the Cape 

 of Good Hope, one at Debreczin, in Hungary, and the fourth at 

 Orgeuil, in France. 



The number of discovered asteroids has now reached 106. 



There will be an eclipse of the moon, visible in England, on the 

 morning of January 28th. Fu-st contact with the penumbra will 

 take place (at Greenwich) at 11 h. 18-2 m. p.m., January 27 ; first 

 contact -vNith the shadow at h. 29-2 m. a.m., January 28 ; the 

 middle of the eclipse at 1 h. 38"2 m. ; and last contact with the 

 penumbra at 15 h. 58'2 m. Somewhat less than one half (more 

 exactly 0'450) of the moon's diameter will be eclipsed. The first 

 contact with the shadow will occur at 50° from the northernmost 

 point of the moon's limb towards the east ; last contact at 31° 

 towards the west. 



Peoceedings of the Eoyal Astronomical Soceety. 



Dr. 0. Pihl has laid before the Astronomical Society the results 

 of a micrometric examination of the stellar cluster in Perseus. He 

 has been prosecuting this examination since the year 1860, with a 

 view to obtain, within comparatively smaU probable errors, a men- 

 suration of all the more conspicuous stars, sufficiently exact to serve 

 as a basis for investigating at some remote date the mechanism of 

 the system. The instrument which he has made use of in these re- 



