The award of the highest distinction in astronomy, the gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, two years in succession, to those who have been most successful in celestial photography is no doubtful sign of the great value attached to such work. Last year it was Mr. Common who received the highest testimony of the merit due to his splendid photographs of the nebula of Orion; and this year Dr. Huggins, who has drawn much attention to celestial photography, by his successful attempts to picture the solar corona in full daylight, has received a similar acknowledgment of his labors in photographing the spectra of stars and comets and nebulæ.
An adequate idea of the progress astronomy is now making by aid of photography can only be formed by a comprehensive view of all that is being at present attempted; but a rapid glance at some of the work may prepare the way for a more thorough investigation. A few years since, the astronomers who had advanced their science by aid of photography were few in number, and their results are soon enumerated. Some good pictures of the solar corona taken during solar eclipses, a series or two of sun-spot photographs, and a very limited number of successful attempts made upon the moon, and planets, and star clusters, were all the fruits of their labors. But now each month we learn of some new and efficient laborer in this field, which gives promise of so rich a harvest.
Each day the sun is photographed at Greenwich, at South Kensington, in India, and at the Physical Observatory of Potsdam, and thus a sure record is obtained of all the spots upon its surface, which may serve for the study of the periodicity of its changes, and for their probable connection with the important phenomena of terrestrial magnetism and meteorology. In France the splendid sun-pictures obtained by Dr. Janssen at the Physical Observatory of Meudon have thrown into the shade all other attempts at a photographic study of the most delicate features of the solar surface.
Dr. Huggins has shown that it is possible to obtain a daily photographic record of the solar prominences, and only lately he has secured results that justified a special expedition to the Alps to photograph the sun's corona, and he has now moved the Admiralty to grant a subsidy to Dr. Gill, the government astronomer at the Cape, by aid of which Mr. Woods can carry on the experiments that were so encouraging last summer in Switzerland.