Masterpieces of Science 



into the sun and planets filled the whole space oc- 

 cupied by the solar system, in the condition of 

 gas, which then appeared as a glowing nebula, after 

 the order, it may be, of some now existing in the 

 heavens. There remained no room for doubt 

 that the nebulas, which our telescopes reveal to us, 

 are the early stages of long processions of cos- 

 mical events, which correspond broadly to those 

 required by the nebular hypothesis in one or other 

 of its forms. "* 



The first photograph of a nebula, that of Orion, 

 was taken by Dr. Henry Draper on September 30, 

 1880. In the following March he took another in 

 a little more than two hours, which, for nearly 

 every purpose of study, was incomparably better 

 than the drawing that had occupied Professor 

 Bond for every available hour during four years 

 ending with 1863. Better still is the photograph 

 secured in but forty minutes with the Crossley 

 Reflector at Lick Observatory, November 16, 

 1898. Dr. Isaac Roberts of Crowborough, in 

 England, is a successful photographer of nebulas, 

 and his pictures are instructive in the extreme 

 because he compares them with pictures of 

 stellar systems; between the two he finds a con- 

 nection strongly suggestive of derivation. 



"To begin with, he shows a number of photo- 

 graphs of star regions in which the stars can be 

 seen grouped into semi-circles, segments, por- 

 tions of ellipses and lines of various degrees of 

 curvature. Some of these groups are composed 



* Nineteenth Century, June, 1897. 



98 



