Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/217

Rh and one unskilled will not be able to produce any good results from the best modern artillery; but an expert behind a Krupp can produce a high percentage of effective hits. And so it is with the Lick Observatory. Not only is it a wonderful engine of science, but also it has been very fortunate in the astronomers who have operated it.

I can not here go into the details of all that has been done at the Lick Observatory, but the following extracts from "A Brief Account of the Lick Observatory of the University of California," prepared by the director of the observatory, 1914, give an idea of the principal things of general interest that have been accomplished in the quarter of a century of its existence:

 1. To the four bright satellites of Jupiter discovered by Galileo in 1610, the Lick Observatory has added four satellites. 2. Twenty-nine comets have been discovered. Nineteen of these were unexpected, and ten were periodic comets whose return had been predicted. 3. The first great success in photographing comets and the Milky Way were made here. 4. About 4,400 double star systems have been discovered. 5. Irregularities in the motions of the first magnitude star Procyon had led the celebrated German astronomer Bessel, three quarters of a century ago, to predict that Procyon had a companion sun revolving around it. This companion was discovered with the Lick telescope. 6. SpectographicSpectrographic [sic] observations of stellar motions have shown that the solar system is traveling through space, with reference to the general stellar system, at a speed of about twelve miles per second.