DOUBLE-SLIDE PLATE-HOLDER OF THE CROSSLEY REFLECTOR.

In long exposures it is important for the observer to know at any moment the position of the plate with reference to its central or zero position. For this purpose scales with indexes are attached to both slides; but as they can not be seen in the dark, and, even if illuminated with red light, could not be read without removing the eye from the guiding eyepiece, I have added two short pins, one of which is attached to the lower side of the right ascension slide, and the other to its guide, so that the points coincide when the scale reads zero. These pins can be felt by the fingers, and with a little practice the observer can tell very closely how far the plate is from its central position. It would not be a very difficult matter to improve on this contrivance, say by placing an illuminated scale, capable of independent adjustment, in the field of the eyepiece, but the pins answer every purpose. The declination slide is changed so little that no means for indicating its position are necessary.

In this apparatus, as originally constructed, the cross-wires of the guiding eyepiece were exactly in the plane of the photographic plate. The earlier observations made with the Crossley reflector on Mount Hamilton showed that this is not the best position of the cross-wires. The image of a star in the guiding eyepiece, which, when in the middle of its slide, is nearly three inches from the axis of the mirror, is not round, and its shape varies as the eyepiece is pushed in or drawn out. In the plane of the photographic plate (assumed to be accurately in focus), it is a crescent, with the convex side directed toward the center of the plate. This form of image is not suitable for accurate guiding. Outside this position the image changes to an arrow-head, the point of which is directed toward the axis, and this image can be very accurately bisected by the right ascension thread. As the construction of the apparatus did not allow the plane of the cross-wires to be changed, the wooden bed of the plate-holder was cut down, so as to bring the wires and the plate into the proper relative positions.

After some further experience with the instrument, still another change was made in this adjustment. It was found that the focus often changed very perceptibly during a long exposure, and while the arrow-head image above described was suitable for guiding purposes, its form was not greatly affected by changes of focus. Between the crescent and the arrow-head images there is a transition form, in which two well-defined caustic curves in the aberration pattern intersect at an acute angle. The intersection of these caustics offers an excellent mark for the cross-wires, and is at the same time very sensitive to changes of focus, which cause it to travel up or down in the general pattern. The bed of the plate-holder was therefore raised, by facing it with a brass plate of the proper thickness.

Why the focus of the telescope should change during a long exposure is not quite clear. The change is much too great to be accounted for by expansion and contraction of the rods forming the tube, following changes of temperature, while a simple geometrical construction shows that a drooping of the upper end of the tube, increasing the distance of the plate from the (unreflected) axis of the mirror, can not displace the focus in a direction normal to the plate, if it is assumed that the field is flat. The observed effect is probably due to the fact that the focal surface is not flat, but curved. During a long exposure, the observer keeps the guiding star, and therefore, very approximately, all other stars, in the same positions relatively to the plate; but he has no control over the position of the axis of the mirror, which, by changes of flexure, wanders irregularly over the field. The position of maximum curvature, therefore, also varies, and with it the focus of the guiding star relatively to the cross-wires, where the focal surface is considerably inclined to the field of view. It is certain that the focus does change considerably, whatever the cause may be, and that the best photographic star images are obtained by keeping the focus of the guiding star unchanged during the exposures. This is done by turning the focusing screw of the eye-end.

In making the photographs of nebulæ for which the Crossley telescope is at present regularly employed, it was at first our practice to adjust the driving-clock as accurately as possible to a sidereal rate, and then, when the star had drifted too far from its original position, on account of changes of rate or of flexure, to bring it back by the right-ascension slow motion, the observer either closing the slide of the plate-holder or following the motion of the star as best he could with the right-ascension screw. Lately a more satisfactory method, suggested by Mr. Palmer, has been employed. The slow motion in right ascension is of Grubb’s form,[10] and the telescope has two slightly different rates, according to whether the loose wheel is stopped or allowed to turn freely. The driving-clock is adjusted so that one of these rates is too fast, the other too slow. At the beginning of an exposure the wheel is, say, unclamped, and the guiding star begins to drift very slowly toward the left, the observer following it with the screw of the plate-holder. When it has drifted far enough, as indicated by the pins mentioned farther above, the wheel is clamped. The star then reverses its motion and begins to drift toward the right; and so on throughout the exposure. The advantages of this method over the one previously employed are, that the star never has to be moved by the slow motion of the telescope, and that its general drift is in a known direction, so that its movements can be anticipated by the observer. In this way photographs are obtained, with four hours’ exposure, on which the smallest star disks are almost perfectly round near the center of the plate, and from 2″ to 3″ in diameter.

The star images are practically round over a field at least 1 inch or 16′ in diameter. Farther from the center they become parabolic, but they are quite good over the entire plate, 3¼ by 4¼ inches.

From these statements it will be seen that small irregularities in driving no longer present any difficulties. But certain irregular motions of the image still take place occasionally, and so far it has not been possible entirely to prevent their occurrence.

It was found that the declination clamp (the long slow-motion handle attached to which is shown in the illustration) was not sufficiently powerful to hold the telescope firmly during a long exposure. A screw clamp was therefore added, which forces the toothed-declination sector strongly against an iron block just behind it, thus restoring, I think, the original arrangement of the declination clamp as designed by Dr. Common. This clamp holds the tube very firmly.

The irregularities to which I have referred consist in sudden and unexpected jumps of the image, which always occur some time after the telescope has passed the meridian. These jumps are sometimes quite large—as much as one-sixteenth of an inch or 1. They are due to two causes: flexure of the tube, and sliding of the mirror on its bed. When the jump is due to sudden changes of flexure, the image moves very quickly, and vibrates before it comes to rest in its new position, and at the same time there is often heard a slight ringing sound from the tension rods of the tube. There seems to be no remedy for the sudden motions of this class. The tension rods are set up as tightly as possible without endangering the threads at their ends or buckling the large corner tubes. A round telescope tube, made of spirally-wound steel ribbon riveted at the crossings, would probably be better than the square tube now in use.

Jumps due to shifting of the mirror are characterized by a gentle, gliding motion. They can be remedied, in part, at least, by tightening the copper bands which pass around the circumference of the mirror within its cell. This will be done the next time the mirror is resilvered.

All that the observer can do when a jump occurs is to bring back the image as quickly as possible to the intersection of the cross-wires. If all the stars on the plate are faint, no effect will be produced on the photograph; but stars of the eighth magnitude or brighter will leave short trails. The nebula, if there is one on the plate, will, of course, be unaffected.

Before beginning an exposure the focus is adjusted by means of a high-power positive eyepiece. An old negative, from which the film has been partially scraped, is placed in one of the plate-holders, and the film is brought into the common focus of the eyepiece and the great mirror. The appearance of the guiding star, which varies somewhat with the position of the guiding eyepiece on its slide, is then carefully noted, and is kept constant during the exposure by turning, when necessary, the focusing screw of the eye-end. For preliminary adjustments a ground-glass screen is often convenient. On it all the DM. stars, and even considerably fainter ones, as well as the nebulæ of Herschel’s Class I, are easily visible without a lens.

Plates are backed, not more than a day or two before use, with Carbutt’s “Columbian backing,” which is an excellent preparation for this purpose. During the exposure the observer and assistant exchange places every half hour, thereby greatly relieving the tediousness of the work, though two exposures of four hours each, in one night, have proved to be too fatiguing for general practice. At the end of the first two hours it is necessary to close the slide and wind the clock.

The brightness of the guiding star is a matter of some importance. If the star is too bright, its glare is annoying; if it is too faint, the effort to see it strains the eye, and changes of focus are not easily recognized. A star of the ninth magnitude is about right. In most cases a suitable star can be found without difficulty.

In such an apparatus as that described above, the amount by which the plate may be allowed to depart from its zero position is subject to a limitation which has not, I think, been pointed out, although it is sufficiently obvious when one’s attention has been called to it. It depends upon the fact that the plate necessarily moves as a whole, in a straight line which is tangent to a great circle of the sphere, while the stars move on small circles around the pole. The compensation for drift, when the plate is moved, is therefore exact at the equator only.

Let the guiding star have the declination δ₁, and let a star on the upper edge of the plate (which, when the telescope is north of the zenith, and the eye-end is on the north side of the telescope, will be the southern edge) have the declination δ₂. Then if the guiding star is allowed to drift from its zero position through the distance d, the other star will drift through the distance d (cos δ₂ / cos δ₁). If the guiding star is followed by turning the right-ascension screw, the upper edge of the plate, as well as the guiding eyepiece, will be moved through the distance d. Hence there will be produced an elongation of the upper star, represented by

Now, in the Crossley reflector, the upper edge of the plate and the guiding eyepiece are just about 3⅔ inches, or 1°, apart. If e is given, the above formula serves to determine the maximum range of the slide for different positions of the telescope.

It has been stated farther above that the smallest star disks, on a good photograph, are sometimes not more than 2″ in diameter, or in a linear measure, about ¹⁄20 mm. An elongation of this amount is therefore perceptible. There are many nebulæ in high northern declinations, and there are several particularly fine ones in about +70°. If, therefore, we take δ₂ = 70°, δ₁, = 71°, e = 0.05, and substitute these values, we find d = 1.0 mm, which is the greatest permissible range of the plate in photographing these nebulæ. Before I realized the stringency of this requirement, by making the above simple computation, I spoiled several otherwise fine negatives by allowing the plate to get too far from the center, thus producing elongated star images.

There is a corresponding elongation in declination, the amount of which can be determined by an adaptation of the formula for reduction to the meridian, but it is practically insensible.

On account of the short focal length of the three-foot mirror, the photographic resolving power of the telescope is much below its optical resolving power. For this reason the photographic images are less sensitive to conditions affecting the seeing than the visual images. On the finest nights the delicate tracery of bright lines or caustic curves in the guiding star is as clear and distinct as in a printed pattern. When the seeing is only fair these delicate details are lost, and only the general form of the image, with its two principal caustics, is seen. A photograph taken on such a night is not, however, perceptibly inferior to one taken when the seeing is perfect. When, however, the image is so blurred that its general form is barely distinguishable, the photographic star disks are likewise blurred and enlarged, and on such nights photographic work is not attempted.

The foregoing account of the small changes which have been made in the Crossley telescope and its accessories may appear to be unnecessarily detailed, yet these small changes have greatly increased the practical efficiency of the instrument, and, therefore, small as they are, they are important. Particularly with an instrument of this character, the difference between poor and good results lies in the observance of just such small details as I have described.

At present the Crossley reflector is being used for photographing nebulæ, for which purpose it is very effective. Some nebulæ and clusters, like the great nebula in Andromeda and the Pleiades, are too large for its plate (3¼ × 4¼ in.), but the great majority of nebulæ are very much smaller, having a length of only a few minutes of arc, and a large-scale photograph is required to show them satisfactorily. It is particularly important to have the images of the involved stars as small as they can be made.

Many nebulæ of Herschel’s I and II classes are so bright that fairly good photographs can be obtained with exposures of from one to two hours; but the results obtained with full-light action are so superior to these, that longer exposures of three and one half or four hours are always preferred. In some exceptional cases, exposures of only a few minutes are sufficient. The amount of detail shown, even in the case of very small nebulæ, is surprising. It is an interesting fact that these photographs confirm (in some cases for the first time) many of the visual observations made with the six-foot reflector of the Earl of Rosse.

Incidentally, in making these photographs, great numbers of new nebulæ have been discovered. The largest number that I have found on any one plate is thirty-one. Eight or ten is not an uncommon number, and few photographs have been obtained which do not reveal the existence of three or four. A catalogue of these new objects will be published in due time.

Some of the results obtained with the Crossley reflector, relating chiefly to particular objects of some special interest, have already been published.[11] The photographs have also permitted some wider conclusions to be drawn, which are constantly receiving further confirmation as the work progresses. They may be briefly summarized as follows:

1. Many thousands of unrecorded nebulæ exist in the sky. A conservative estimate places the number within reach of the Crossley reflector at about 120,000. The number of nebulæ in our catalogues is but a small fraction of this.

2. These nebulæ exhibit all gradations of apparent size, from the great nebula in Andromeda down to an object which is hardly distinguishable from a faint star disk.

3. Most of these nebulæ have a spiral structure.

To these conclusions I may add another, of more restricted significance, though the evidence in favor of it is not yet complete. Among the objects which have been photographed with the Crossley telescope are most of the “double” nebulæ figured in Sir John Herschel’s catalogue (Phil. Trans., 1833, Plate XV). The actual nebulæ, as photographed, have almost no resemblance to the figures. They are, in fact, spirals, sometimes of very beautiful and complex structure; and, in any one of the nebulæ, the secondary nucleus of Herschel’s figure is either a part of the spiral approaching the main nucleus in brightness, or it can not be identified with any real part of the object. The significance of this somewhat destructive conclusion lies in the fact that these figures of Herschel have sometimes been regarded as furnishing analogies for the figures which Poincaré had deduced, from theoretical considerations, as being among the possible forms assumed by a rotating fluid mass; in other words, they have been regarded as illustrating an early stage in the development of double star systems. The actual conditions of motion in these particular nebulæ, as indicated by the photographs, are obviously very much more complicated than those considered in the theoretical discussion.

While I must leave to others an estimate of the importance of these conclusions, it seems to me that they have a very direct bearing on many, if not all, questions concerning the cosmogony. If, for example, the spiral is the form normally assumed by a contracting nebulous mass, the idea at once suggests itself that the solar system has been evolved from a spiral nebula, while the photographs show that the spiral nebula is not, as a rule, characterized by the simplicity attributed to the contracting mass in the nebular hypothesis. This is a question which has already been taken up by Professor Chamberlin and Mr. Moulton of the University of Chicago.

The Crossley reflector promises to be useful in a number of fields which are fairly well defined. It is clearly unsuitable for photographing the Moon and planets, and for star charting. On the other hand, it has proved to be of value for finding and photographically observing asteroids whose positions are already approximately known.

One of the most fruitful fields for this instrument is undoubtedly stellar spectroscopy. Little has been done in this field, as yet, with the Crossley reflector, but two spectrographs, with which systematic investigations will be made, have nearly been completed by the Observatory instrument-maker. One of these, constructed with the aid of a fund given by the late Miss C. W. Bruce, has a train of three 60° prisms and one 30° prism, and an aperture of two inches; the other, which has a single quartz prism, will, I have reason to expect, give measurable, though small, spectra of stars nearly at the limit of vision of the telescope.

The photogravure[12] of the Trifid nebula, which accompanies this article, was made from a photograph taken with the Crossley reflector on July 6, 1899, with an exposure of three hours. It was not selected as a specimen of the work of the instrument, for the negative was made in the early stages of the experiments that I have described, and the star images are not good, but rather on account of the interest of the subject. At the time the photogravures were ordered no large scale photograph of the Trifid nebula had, so far as I am aware, ever been published.[13] The remarkable branching structure of the nebula is fairly well shown in the photogravure, though less distinctly than in the transparency from which it was made. The enlargement, as compared with the original negative, is 2.9 diameters (1 mm = 13″). The fainter parts of the nebula would be shown more satisfactorily by a longer exposure.

List of Nebulæ and Clusters Photographed.

Catalogue of New Nebulæ Discovered on the Negatives.