6 o Dr. Herschel’s Experiments on the Means 
Oct. 8. If the appearance resembling the spurious disks of 
small stars, which I see with 410.5 in Mr. Harding's asteroid, 
should be a real diameter, its quantity then by estimation may 
amount to about o",3. This judgment is founded on the facility 
with which I • can see two globules often viewed for this 
purpose. 
The angle of the first is o",^2g, and of the other ©",214; 
and the asteroid might be larger than the latter, but certainly 
was not equal to the former. 
With 4.96,3, there is an ill defined hazy appearance, but 
nothing that may be called a disk visible. When there is a 
glimpse of more condensed light to be seen in the centre, it is 
so small that it must be less than two-tenths of a second. 
To decide whether this apparent condensed light was a real 
or spurious disk, I applied different limitations to the aperture 
of the telescope, but found that the light of the new star was 
too feeble to permit the use of them. From this I concluded 
that an increase of light might now be of great use, and viewed 
the asteroid with a fine 10-feet mirror of 24 inches diameter, 
but found that nothing was gained by the change. The tem- 
perature indeed of these large mirrors is very seldom the 
same as that of the air in which they are to act, and till a 
perfect uniformity takes place, no high powers can be used. 
The asteroid in the meridian, and the night beautiful. After 
many repeated comparisons of equal stars with the asteroid, I 
think it shows more of a disk than they do, but it is so small 
that it cannot amount to so much as 3-tenths of a second, or at 
least to no more. 
It is accompanied with rather more nebulosity than stars of 
tne same size. 
