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Page 36
So Olbers and his twenty-three associates began, in the last decade of
the eighteenth century, to search diligently for the verification of
Kepler's prediction and the fulfillment of Bode's Law. Oddly enough,
Piazzi was not one of the twenty-four astronomers who had agreed to
find the new world. He was exploring the heavens on his own account,
and in doing so, he found what the others had failed to find, that is,
the first asteroid.
The body discovered answered so little to the hopes of the
astronomical fraternity that they immediately said within themselves:
"This is not he; we seek another." So they continued the search, and
in a little more than a year Olbers himself was rewarded with the
discovery of the second of the planetoid group. On the twenty-eighth
of March, 1802, he made his discovery from an upper chamber of his
dwelling in Bremen, where he had his telescope. On the night in
question he was scanning the northern part of the constellation of
Virgo, when the sought-for object was found. This body, like the first
of its kind, was very small, and was found to be moving from west to
east in nearly the same orbit as its predecessor.
Here then was something wonderful. Olbers at once advanced the
hypothesis that probably the two bodies thus discovered were fragments
of what had been a large planet moving in its orbit through this part
of the heavens. If so there might be--and probably were--others of
like kind. The search was at once renewed, and on the night of the
first of September, 1804, the third of the asteroid group was found by
the astronomer Hardy, of Bremen. The belief that a large planet had
been disrupted in this region was strengthened, and astronomers
continued their exploration; but two years and a half elapsed before
another asteroid was found. On the evening of March 29, 1807, the
diligence of Olbers was rewarded with the discovery of the fourth of
the group, which like its predecessors, was so small and irregular in
character as still further to favor the fragmentary theory.
How shall we name the asteroids? Piazzi fell back upon pagan mythology
for the name of his little world, and called it Ceres, from the Roman
goddess of corn. Olbers named the second asteroid Pallas; the third
was called Juno--whose rank in the Greek and Roman pantheon might have
suggested one of the major planets as her representative in the skies;
and the fourth was called Vesta, from the Roman divinity of the
hearthstone.
Here then there was a pause. Though the zodiac continued to be swept
by many observers, a period of more than thirty-eight years went by
before the fifth asteroid was found. The cycle of these discoveries
strikingly illustrates the general movement of scientific progress.
First there is a new departure; then a lull, and then a resumption of
exploration and a finding more fertile than ever. It was on the night
of the eighth of December, 1845, that the German astronomer Hencke
discovered the fifth asteroid and named it Astr�a. After a year and a
half, namely, on the night of the first of July, 1847, the same
observer discovered the sixth member of the group, and to this was
given the name Hebe. On the thirteenth of August in the same year the
astronomer Hind found the seventh asteroid, and named it Iris. On the
eighteenth of October following he found the eighth, and this was
called Flora. Then on the twenty-fifth of April, 1848, came the
discovery of Metis, by Graham. Nearly a year later the Italian De
Gasparis found the tenth member of the system, that is, Hygeia. De
Gasparis soon discovered the eleventh body, which was called
Parthenope. This was on the eleventh of May, 1850.
Two other asteroids were found in this year; and two in 1851. In the
following year _nine_ were discovered; and so on from year to year
down to the present date. Some years have been fruitful in such finds,
while others have been comparatively barren. In a number of the years,
only a single asteroid has been added to the list; but in others whole
groups have been found. Thus in 1861 twelve were discovered; in 1868,
twelve; in 1875, _seventeen_; in 1890, fourteen. Not a single year
since 1846 has passed without the addition of at least one known
asteroid to the list.
But while the number has thus increased to an aggregate at the close
of 1890 of three hundred and one, many of the tiny wanderers have
escaped. Some have been rediscovered; and it is possible that some
have been twice or even three times found and named. The whole family
perhaps numbers not only hundreds, but thousands; and it can hardly be
doubted that only the more conspicuous members of the group have ever
yet been seen by mortal eye.
A considerable space about the centre of the planetary zone between
Mars and Jupiter is occupied with these multitudinous pigmy worlds
that follow the one the other in endless flight around the sun. It is
a sort of planetary shower; and it can hardly be doubted that the
bodies constituting the flight are graded down in size from larger to
smaller and still smaller until the fragments are mere blocks and bits
of world-dust floating in space. Possibly there may be enough of such
matter to constitute a sort of planetary band that may illumine a
little (as seen from a distance) the zone where it circulates.
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