Part 1 (1/2)

Astronomy for Amateurs

by Camille Flammarion

TO

MADAME CR CAVARe

ORIGINAL MEMBER OF THE ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY OF FRANCE CHaTEAU DE MAUPERTHUIS

MADAME: I have dedicated none of my works, save Stella--offered to the liberal-ress, and patron of the sciences, James Gordon Bennett, editor of the New York Herald In this volume, Madame, I make another exception, and ask your permission to offer it to the first woman who consented to be enrolled in the list of members of the Astronomical Society of France, as foundress of this splendid work, fro of our vast association (1887); and who also desired to take part in the peranization of the Observatory at Juvisy, a task of private enterprise, emancipated from administrative routine An Astronomy for Women[1] can not be better placed than upon the table of a lady whose erudition is equal to her virtues, and who has consecrated her long career to the pursuit and service of the Beautiful, the Good, and the True

CAMILLE FLAMMARION

OBSERVATORY OF JUVISY, _November, 1903_

INTRODUCTION

The Science of Astrono, divine, it gives us wings, and bears us through Infinitude

In these ethereal regions all is pure, luminous, and splendid Dreams of the Ideal, even of the Inaccessible, weave their subtle spells upon us

The iination soars aloft, and aspires to the sources of Eternal Beauty

What greater delight can be conceived, on a fine spring evening, at the hour when the crescent lirand and silent spectacle of the stars stepping forth in sequence in the vast Heavens? All sounds of life die out upon the earth, the last notes of the sleepy birds have sunk away, the Angelus of the church hard by has rung the close of day

But if life is arrested around us, weorbs are so ation suspended above our heads in the inaccessible depths of space Gradually they multiply There is Venus, the white star of the shepherd There Mars, the little celestial world so near our own There the giant Jupiter

The seven stars of the Great Bear seem to point out the pole, while they slowly revolve around it What is this nebulous light that blanches the darkness of the heavens, and traverses the constellations like a celestial path? It is the Galaxy, the Milky Way, composed of millions on millions of suns! The darkness is profound, the abyss ilides silently across the sky, and disappears!

Who can reic spectacle of the starry Heavens?

Where is the ence of the amateur, the feminine, no less than the more material and prosaic masculine mind, is well adapted to the consideration of astronomical problems Women, indeed, are naturally predisposed to these contemplative studies And the part they are called to play in the education of our children is so vast, and so iht by the youngminds that are curious about every issue--whose first ihout the ages women have occupied themselves successfully with Astronomy, not merely in its contemplative and descriptive, but also in its mathematical aspects Of such, the most illustrious was the beautiful and learned Hypatia of Alexandria, born in the year 375 of our era, public lecturer on georeat inorance and fanaticised fro the Cathedral Square, in March, 415, stripped of her garments, stoned to death, and burned as a dishonored witch!

A the women inspired with a passion for the Heavens may be cited St

Catherine of Alexandria, ad, her beauty and her virtue She was n of Maxiiven her nas

Another celebrated female mathematician was Madame Hortense Lepaute, born in 1723, who collaborated with Clairaut in the immense calculations by which he predicted the return of Halley's Coave us such immense assistance that, without her, we should never have ventured to undertake this enormous labor, in which it was necessary to calculate for every degree, and for a hundred and fifty years, the distances and forces of the planets acting by their attraction on the co to night, sometimes even at table, and as the result of this forced labor I contracted an illness that has changed my constitution for life; but it was important to publish the result before the arrival of the comet”

This extract will suffice for the appreciation of the scientific ardor of Madame Lepaute We are indebted to her for some considerable works