Januaey 2, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



the work in astrophysics the older science 

 of astronomy of position has heen greatly 

 neglected. This is partly due to the fact 

 that much of this work has been left to the 

 United States Naval Observatory, which 

 in the past has failed to justify the liberal 

 appropriations made for its support. 

 While Congress has given it for many 

 years a much larger income than that of 

 any other observatory in the world, the 

 law has been such that it is impossible to 

 attain the best results. The superintend- 

 ent must be a naval officer, instead of an 

 astronomer, and even then must go to sea 

 after a short term. Accordingly, the Naval 

 Observatory during a period of 37 years 

 had 20 superintendents with an average 

 term of less than two years. The Green- 

 wich Observatory during a period of 235 

 years from 1675 to 1910 has had 8 astron- 

 omers royal with an average term of 29 

 years. The work of the latter institution 

 with but half the income has greatly ex- 

 ceeded that of the Naval Observatory. 

 It should be stated, however, that within 

 the last few weeks, the Naval Observatory 

 has established an admirable wireless 

 time service by which any one can obtain, 

 at trifling expense, accurate time within a 

 tenth of a second. The Navy has no need 

 of a great observatory, from which it 

 derives but little credit. Three successive 

 boards of visitors have pointed out the 

 present unfortunate conditions, but the 

 necessary action has not been taken by 

 Congress. The obvious remedy is to re- 

 move the observatory to another depart- 

 ment, or place it under the direction of 

 the Smithsonian Institution, and appoint 

 an astronomer at its head. What grander 

 field of work could be undertaken by this 

 observatory than that desired by astron- 

 omers and neglected elsewhere. For in- 

 stance, computers of double star orbits are 

 continually complaining that while a sur- 



plus of measures of the easy objects are 

 available, many difficult objects are ne- 

 glected, although measures of them are 

 greatly needed. The same is true of the 

 asteroids, of variable stars, and in fact in 

 almost every department of astronomy. 

 By making the observations desired by ex- 

 perts, every hour would be saved, and 

 work of the greatest value accumulated. 



Astrophysics assumed prominence as a 

 science about forty years ago, although it 

 was foreshadowed by certain far-seeing 

 astronomers like the Herschels, G. P. Bond, 

 Huggins, Draper and others. One depart- 

 ment, the study of the light of the stars, 

 was developed much earlier, originating in 

 the Almagest and its revision a thousand 

 years later by Sufi. These catalogues show 

 that the relative brightness of the stars has 

 not changed sensibly during the last two 

 thousand years. Also, that the human eye 

 has the same sensitiveness to different 

 colors, now as then. Stellar brightness was 

 made a precise science by that great astron- 

 omer, William Hersehel. His six cata- 

 logues, two of which remained unknown for 

 eighty years, give precise measures of the 

 light of the three thousand stars contained 

 in them with an accuracy comparable with 

 recent work. 



In 1877, stellar photometry was taken 

 up on a large scale at Harvard. Since 

 then, more than two million photometric 

 settings have been made. A station in 

 Arequipa, Peru, permitted the southern 

 stars to be observed on the same system as 

 the northern stars. We have now, accord- 

 ingly, measures of about eighty thousand 

 stars, including all of the seventh magnitude 

 and brighter, many of the ninth magnitude, 

 and some as faint as the thirteenth magni- 

 tude. The excellent work of the Potsdam 

 Observatory gives measures of the light of 

 fourteen thousand stars including all 

 northern stars of the magnitude 7.5, and 



