It is evident that the places of all the celestial bodies are affected by precession and nutation. Their longitudes estimated from the equinox are augmented by precession; but, as it affects all the bodies equally, it makes no change in their relative positions. Both the celestial latitudes and longitudes are altered to a small degree by nutation; hence all observations must be corrected for these inequalities. In consequence of this real motion in the earth’s axis, the pole-star, forming part of the constellation of the Little Bear, which was formerly 12° from the celestial pole, is now within 1° 24ʹ of it, and will continue to approach it till it is within 1/2°, after which it will retreat from the pole for ages; and 12,934 years hence the star α Lyræ will come within 5° of the celestial pole, and become the polar star of the northern hemisphere.
Mean and Apparent Sidereal Time—Mean and Apparent Solar Time—Equation of Time—English and French Subdivisions of Time—Leap Year—Christian Era—Equinoctial Time—Remarkable Eras depending upon the Position of the Solar Perigee—Inequality of the Lengths of the Seasons in the two Hemispheres—Application of Astronomy to Chronology—English and French Standards of Weights and Measures.
ASTRONOMY has been of immediate and essential use in affording invariable standards for measuring duration, distance, magnitude, and velocity. The mean sidereal day measured by the time elapsed between two consecutive transits of any star at the same meridian (N. 148), and the mean sidereal year which is the time included between two consecutive returns of the sun to the same star, are immutable units with which all great periods of time are compared; the oscillations of the isochronous pendulum measure its smaller portions. By these invariable standards alone we can judge of the slow changes that other elements of the system may have undergone. Apparent sidereal time, which is measured by the transit of the equinoctial point at the meridian of any place, is a variable quantity, from the effects of precession and nutation. Clocks showing apparent sidereal time are employed for observation, and are so regulated that they indicate 0^h 0^m 0^s at the instant the equinoctial point passes the meridian of the observatory. And as time is a measure of angular motion, the clock gives the distances of the heavenly bodies from the equinox by observing the instant at which each passes the meridian, and converting the interval into arcs at the rate of 15° to an hour.