Article October 18, 1900 Issue

Close Study of the Moon

Harvard College to Establish a Station at Jamaica.

Boston Herald

Our great satellite, the moon, will be studied as never before this coming winter. The astronomical observatory of Harvard College is about to establish a station on the island of Jamaica, in the British West Indies. Members of the staff of the observatory are now engaged in packing the instruments and preparing for speedy departure. The principal instrument which will be used in Jamaica will be a long-focus horizontal refractor with a twelve-inch aperture and a focus length of one hundred and thirty-five feet. This type of telescope is stationary, with a mirror at the end reflecting any portion of the sky which it is desired to observe, through the tube to the eyepiece. The telescope will be used visually and for photographic purposes.

Assistant Professor W. H. Pickering, who will be in charge of the Jamaica station for the present, has lately succeeded in securing with this instrument the smallest object, angularly measured, ever obtained on a photographic plate. This was a perfectly clear image only one second in diameter of a star. How small this is may be partially conceived when one realizes that a sport an inch in diameter held at the distance of twenty inches from the eye has a diameter of ten thousand seconds.

Professor Pickering will endeavor to complete the visual observations of the moon which have already brought him so much fame, he having demonstrated that there are active volcanoes and some form of vegetation there, and having devoted much time to the important question of the existence of atmosphere on our satellite. Professor W. H. Pickering will continue his work on the elliptical forms of the disks of Jupiter's satellites which has attracted great attention.

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