262 Dr. Herschei/s Observations on the 
racy by an application of higher magnifying powers. My ob- 
servations on the nature of this second new star discovered 
by Dr. Olbers are as follow. 
April 24. This day, as we have already seen, the new ce- 
lestial object was examined with a high power ; and since a 
magnifier of 460 would not show it to be different from the 
stars of an equal apparent brightness ; its diameter must be 
extremely small, and we may reasonably expect it to be an 
asteroid. 
May 21. With a double eye-piece magnifying only 75 
times the supposed asteroid A makes a right-angled triangle 
with two small stars a b. See fig. 2. 
With a very ditinct magnifier of 460 there is no appearance 
of any planetary disk. 
May 22. The new star has moved away from a b , and is 
now situated as in fig. 3. The star A of figure 1 is no longer 
in the place where I observed it the 24th of April, and was 
therefore the asteroid. I examined it now with gradually in- 
creased magnifying powers, and the air being remarkably 
clear, I saw it very distinctly with 460, 577, and 636. On com- 
paring its appearance with these powers alternately to that of 
equal stars, among which was the 463d of Bode's Catalogue 
of the stars in the Lion of the 7th magnitude, I could not find 
any difference in the visible size of their disks. 
By the estimations of the distances of double stars, contained 
in the first and second classes of the catalogues I have given 
of them, it will be seen that I have always considered every 
star as having a visible, though spurious, disk or diameter ; 
and in a late paper I have entered at large into the method of 
detecting real disks from spurious ones ; it may therefore be 
