Page:A short history of astronomy(1898).djvu/417

§ 265] depending on the rapidity of the sun's motion and on the nearness of the stars in question. The effect is exactly of the same nature as that produced when, on looking along a street at night, two lamps on opposite sides of the street at some distance from us appear close together, but as we walk down the street towards them they appear to become more and more separated from one another. In the figure, for example, and ' as seen from  appear farther apart than when seen from.

If the observed proper motions of stars examined are not of this character, they cannot be explained as due merely to the motion of the sun; but if they shew some tendency to move in this way, then the observations can be most simply explained by regarding the sun as in motion, and by assuming that the discrepancies between the effects resulting from the assumed motion of the sun and the observed proper motions are due to the motions in space of the several stars.

From the few proper motions which Mayer had at his command he was, however, unable to derive any indication of a motion of the sun.

Herschel used the proper motions, published by Maskelyne and Lalande, of 14 stars (13 if the double star Castor be counted as only one), and with extraordinary insight detected in them a certain uniformity of motion of the kind already described, such as would result from a motion of the sun. The point on the celestial sphere towards which the sun was assumed to be moving, the apex as he called it, was taken to be the point marked by the star λ in the