A Short History of Astronomy

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Scribner, 1899 - Astronomy - 440 pages
 

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Page 242 - I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
Page 337 - I have seen double and treble nebulae variously arranged; large ones with small, seeming attendants ; narrow, but much extended lucid nebulae or bright dashes; some of the shape of a fan, resembling an electric brush issuing from a lucid point...
Page 340 - If this matter is self-luminous, it seems more fit to produce a star by its condensation than to depend on the star for its existence.
Page iii - Verzeiht! es ist ein groß Ergetzen, Sich in den Geist der Zeiten zu versetzen, Zu schauen, wie vor uns ein weiser Mann gedacht, Und wie wir's dann zuletzt so herrlich weit gebracht.
Page 165 - Every body continues in its state of rest or of uniform motion in a straight line, except in so far as it may be compelled by impressed forces to change that state.
Page 340 - They now are seen to resemble a luxuriant garden, which contains the greatest variety of productions, in different nourishing beds; and one advantage we may at least reap from it is, that we can, as it were, extend the range of our experience to an immense duration.
Page 212 - In the beginning of the year 1665 I found the method of approximating Series and the Rule for reducing any dignity of any Binomial into such a series.
Page 213 - Orbs must [be] reciprocally as the squares of their distances from the centers about which they revolve : and thereby compared the force requisite to keep the Moon in her orb with the force of gravity at the surface of the earth, and found them answer pretty nearly. All this was in the two plague years of 1665 and 1666 ', for in those days I was in the prime of my age for invention, and minded Mathematicks and Philosophy more than at any time since.

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