Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/238

 for a telescope to adjust itself to out-of-door temperature, except in the summer time, and it is better to allow an hour or two for such adjustment in cold weather. Any irregularity in the shape of the rings which persists after the lenses have been accurately adjusted and the telescope has properly cooled may be ascribed to imperfections, such as veins or spots of unequal density in the glass forming the objective.

The spherical aberration of an object glass may be undercorrected or overcorrected. In the former case the central rings inside the focus will appear faint and the outer ones unduly strong, while outside the focus the central rings will be too bright and the outer ones too feeble. But if the aberration is overcorrected the central rings will be overbright inside the focus and abnormally faint outside the focus.

Assuming that we have a telescope in which no obvious fault is discernible, the next thing is to test its powers in actual work. In what is to follow I shall endeavor to describe some of the principal objects in the heavens from which the amateur observer may expect to derive pleasure and instruction, and which may at the same time serve as tests of the excellence of his telescope.



No one should be deterred or discouraged in the study of celestial objects by the apparent insignificance of his means of observation. The accompanying pictures of the planet Mars may serve as an indication of the fact that a small telescope is frequently capable of doing work that appears by no means contemptible when placed side by side with that of the greater instruments of the observatories.