Part 30

Directly the new planet was discovered, Mr. Lassell turned his large reflector upon it and sought to learn something of its appearance, and possibly detect one or more of its satellites. On October 3 and 10, 1846, he was struck with the appearance of the disk, which was obviously not spherical. He subsequently confirmed this impression, and concluded that a ring, inclined about 70°, surrounded the planet. Professor Challis supported this view, but later observations in a purer sky led Mr. Lassell to abandon the idea. Thus the ring of Neptune, like the ring of Uranus, though apparently obvious at first, vanished in the light of more modern researches.

But if Mr. Lassell quite failed to demonstrate the existence of a ring, he nevertheless succeeded in discovering a satellite belonging to the planet. This was on October 10, 1846. The new satellite was found to have a period of 5 days, 21 hours, and 3 minutes, and to be situated about 220,000 miles distant from the planet.

END OF VOLUME ONE

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

Footnote [13] is referenced twice from page 102.

Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within the text and consultation of external sources.

Some hyphens in words have been silently removed, some added, when a predominant preference was found in the original book.

Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text, and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.

Pg 3: ‘Caliph Al-Mamum’ replaced by ‘Caliph Al-Mamun’. Pg 20: ‘Ninteenth Century’ replaced by ‘Nineteenth Century’. Pg 21: ‘Map of the’ replaced by ‘Chart of the’. Pg 21: ‘Hourglass Sea’ replaced by ‘Nine Views of the Hour-Glass Sea’. Pg 74: ‘cose che redire’ replaced by ‘cose che ridire’. Pg 74: ‘Nè sa, nè’ replaced by ‘Né sa, né’. Pg 100: ‘Hesoid’ replaced by ‘Hesiod’. Pg 122: ‘familar to most’ replaced by ‘familiar to most’. Pg 150: ‘formed of myraids’ replaced by ‘formed of myriads’. Pg 223: ‘may be interred’ replaced by ‘may be inferred’. Pg 238: ‘Will some motral’ replaced by ‘Will some mortal’. Pg 292: ‘its orbitual motion’ replaced by ‘its orbital motion’. Pg 380: ‘the Mare Humorom’ replaced by ‘the Mare Humorum’. Pg 390: ‘present themelves’ replaced by ‘present themselves’. Pg 391: ‘Mr. Lowell remarks,*’ replaced by ‘Mr. Lowell remarks,’; (the * anchor had no footnote and has been removed). Pg 396: ‘permamently shut’ replaced by ‘permanently shut’. Pg 418: ‘is a thining-out’ replaced by ‘is a thinning-out’.