Part 11 (1/2)
What is the nature of these vast concentric circles that surround the planet with a luminous halo? They are composed of an innuravitate round the planet at variable speed and distance The nearer particles must accomplish their revolution in 5 hours, 50 minutes, and the most distant in about 12 hours, 5 ed in the surface of Saturn: their own centrifugal force sustains the perspective of Saturn's Rings, as seen frolass the effect of these rings is , and one can not refrain fro this marvel, whereby one of the brothers of our terrestrial country is croith a golden diadem Its aspects vary with its perspective relative to the Earth, as48)
Wethe eight satellites that form his splendid suite:
Names Distance from the planet Time of revolution
Kilometers Miles Days Hours Minutes
1 Mimas 207,000 128,340 22 37 2 Enceladus 257,600 159,712 1 8 53 3 Tethys 328,800 203,856 1 21 18 4 Dione 421,200 261,144 2 17 41 5 Rhea 588,400 364,808 4 12 25 6 titan 1,364,000 845,680 15 22 41 7 Hyperion 1,650,000 1,023,000 21 6 39 8 japhet 3,964,000 2,457,680 79 7 54
Here is a ht different kinds of ht s!
Noe shall cross at a bound the 1,400 million kilometers (868,000,000 miles) that separate us from the last station but one of the immense solar system
URanus
On March 13, 1781, Willialand, having abandoned the study of music to devote hi the vast fields with their constellations of golden stars, when he perceived a luminous point that appeared to him to exceed that of the other celestial lunification of his telescope by more powerful eye-pieces, and found that the apparent diameter of the orb increased proportionately with the amplification of the pohich does not happen in the case of stars at infinite distance His observations on the following evenings enabled him to note the slow and imperceptible movement of this star upon the celestial sphere, and left him in no further doubt: there was no star, but soreat astronomer dared not predict the discovery of a new planet And it was thus, under the name of cometary orb, that the seventh child of the Sun was announced The astronoht to determine the motions of the new arrival, to discover for it an elliptical orbit such as most comets have But their efforts were vain, and after several months' study the conclusion was reached that here was a new planet, throwing back the limits of the solar system to a point far beyond that of the Saturnian frontier, as admitted from antiquity
This neorld received the nahbor in the solar empire Uranus shi+nes in the firnitude, invisible to the unaided eye for norht, at a distance of 2,831,000,000 kilometers (1,755,000,000 miles) from the Sun Ser than Mercury, Venus, Mars, and the Earth together, thus presenting proportions that claim our respect and admiration
His diameter may be taken at about 55,000 kilometers (34,200 miles), that is, rather more than four times the breadth of the terrestrial diameter Sixty-nine times more voluminous than the Earth, and seventeen times more extensive in surface, this neorld is much less than our own in density The hter than that of our globe
Spectral analysis shows that this distant planet is surrounded with an at gases that do not exist in ours
The Uranian globe courses over the fields of infinity in a vast orbit seventeen tier than our own, and its revolution lasts 36,688 days, _ie_, 84 years, 8 days It travels slowly and sadly under the pale and languishi+ng rays of the Sun, which sends it nearly three hundred tiht and heat than we receive At this distance the solar disk would present a diameter seventeen times smaller than that which we admire, and a surface three hundred times less vast A dull world indeed! And what an inter bored er upon Uranus than upon our little Earth, where the days pass so rapidly And if inning to babble in its nurse's arhty-four in this world
But what most seriously complicates the Calendar of the Uranians is the fact that the four moons which accompany the planet accomplish their revolution in four different kinds of ht, and thirteen days, as is shown in the following table:
Distance from the planet Time of revolution
Kilometers Miles Days Hours Minutes
1 Ariel 196,000 121,520 2 12 29 2 Umbriel 276,000 171,120 4 3 27 3 titania 450,000 279,000 8 16 56 4 Oberon 600,000 372,000 13 11 7
The most curious fact is that these satellites do not rotate like those of the other planets While the moons of the Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn accomplish their revolution from east to west, the satellites of Uranus rotate in a plane almost perpendicular to the ecliptic, and it is doubtless the same for the rotation of the planet
If we had to quit the Earth, and fixate ourselves upon another world, we should prefer Mars to Uranus, where everything eht afford us soreeable surprises _Il ne faut jurer de rien_
NEPTUNE
And here we reach the frontier of the Solar Syste on the world of Neptune, which circles through the Heavens in eternal twilight at a distance of more than four milliard kilometers (2,480,000,000 miles) from the coain adies of science
Uranus was discovered with the telescope, Neptune by calculation In addition to the solar influence, the worlds exert a es the harer act upon the weaker, and the colossal Jupiter alone causes reat solar faular observations of the position of Uranus in space, soularities were soon perceived The astrono full faith in the universality of the law of attraction, could not do otherwise than attribute these irregularities to the influence of some unknown planet situated even farther off But at what distance?