55 
of the Sun and fixed Stars. 
the sun was unequal ; many parts of it being elevated, and 
others depressed. This is here to be understood of the shining 
surface only, as the real body of the sun can probably be sel- 
dom seen, otherwise than in its black spots. 
It may not be impossible, as light is a transparent fluid, that 
the sun's real surface also may now and then be perceived ; as 
we see the shape of the wick of a candle through its flame, or 
the contents of a furnace in the midst of the brightest glare of 
it ; but this, I should suppose, will only happen where the lucid 
matter of the sun is not very accumulated. 
Sept, 9, 1792. I found one of the dark spots in the sun 
drawn pretty near the preceding edge. In its neighbourhood 
I saw a great number of elevated bright places, making various 
figures : I shall call them faculae, with Hevelius ; but without 
assigning to this term any other meaning than what it will 
hereafter appear ought to be given to it. I see these faculae ex- 
tended, on the preceding side, over about one-sixth part of the 
sun ; but so far from resembling torches, they appear to me 
like the shrivelled elevations upon a dried apple, extended in 
length, and most of them are joined together, making waves, 
or waving lines. 
By some good views in the afternoon, I find that the rest of 
the surface of the sun does not contain any faculae, except a 
few on the following, and equatorial part of the sun. Towards 
the north and south I see no faculae ; there is all over the sun 
a great unevenness in the surface, which has the appearance 
of a mixture of small points of an unequal light ; but they 
are evidently an unevenness or roughness of high and low 
parts. 
Sept. 11, 1792, The faculae, in the preceding part of the 
