Page:A short history of astronomy(1898).djvu/407

§ 258] of the stars may be admitted in certain calculations; but when we examine the Milky Way, or the closely compressed clusters of stars of which my catalogues have recorded so many instances, this supposed equality of scattering must be given up."

The method of star-gauging was intended primarily to give information as to the limits of the sidereal system—or the visible portions of it. Side by side with this method Herschel constantly made use of the brightness of a star as a probable test of nearness. If two stars give out actually the same amount of light, then that one which is nearer to us will appear the brighter; and on the assumption that no light is absorbed or stopped in its passage through space, the apparent brightness of the two stars will be inversely as the square of their respective distances. Hence, if we receive nine times as much light from one star as from another, and if it is assumed that this difference is merely due to difference of distance, then the first star is three times as far off as the second, and so on.

That the stars as a whole give out the same amount of light, so that the difference in their apparent brightness is due to distance only, is an assumption of the same general character as that of equal distribution. There must necessarily be many exceptions, but, in default of more exact knowledge, it affords a rough-and-ready method of estimating with some degree of probability relative distances of stars.

To apply this method it was necessary to have some means of comparing the amount of light received from different stars. This Herschel effected by using telescopes of different sizes. If the same star is observed with two reflecting telescopes of the same construction but of different sizes, then the light transmitted by the telescope to the eye is proportional to the area of the mirror which collects the light, and hence to the square of the diameter of the mirror. Hence the apparent brightness of a star as viewed through a telescope is proportional on the one hand to the inverse square of the distance, and on the other to the square of the diameter of the mirror of the telescope; hence the distance of the star is, as it were, exactly counterbalanced by the diameter of the mirror of the telescope. For example, if one star viewed in a telescope with an eight-inch mirror and another viewed in the great telescope with a four-foot