[Illustration: FIG. 48. Varying perspective of Saturn's Rings, as seen from the Earth.]
With a good glass the effect of these rings is most striking, and one can not refrain from emotion on contemplating this marvel, whereby one of the brothers of our terrestrial country is crowned with a golden diadem. Its aspects vary with its perspective relative to the Earth, as may be seen from the subjoined figure (Fig. 48).
We must not quit the Saturnian province without mentioning the eight satellites that form his splendid suite:
Names. Distance from the planet. Time of revolution. Kilometers. Miles. Days. Hours. Minutes. 1. Mimas 207,000 128,340 22 37 2. Enceladus 257,600 159,712 1 8 53 3. Tethys 328,800 203,856 1 21 18 4. Dione 421,200 261,144 2 17 41 5. Rhea 588,400 364,808 4 12 25 6. Titan 1,364,000 845,680 15 22 41 7. Hyperion 1,650,000 1,023,000 21 6 39 8. Japhet 3,964,000 2,457,680 79 7 54
Here is a marvelous system, with, what is more, eight different kinds of months for the inhabitants of Saturn; eight moons with constantly varying phases juggling above the rings!
Now we shall cross at a bound the 1,400 million kilometers (868,000,000 miles) that separate us from the last station but one of the immense solar system.
On March 13, 1781, William Herschel, a Hanoverian astronomer who had emigrated to England, having abandoned the study of music to devote himself to the sublime science of the Heavens, was observing the vast fields with their constellations of golden stars, when he perceived a luminous point that appeared to him to exceed that of the other celestial luminaries in diameter. He replaced the magnification of his telescope by more powerful eye-pieces, and found that the apparent diameter of the orb increased proportionately with the amplification of the power, which does not happen in the case of stars at infinite distance. His observations on the following evenings enabled him to note the slow and imperceptible movement of this star upon the celestial sphere, and left him in no further doubt: there was no star, but some much nearer orb, in all probability a comet, for the great astronomer dared not predict the discovery of a new planet. And it was thus, under the name of cometary orb, that the seventh child of the Sun was announced. The astronomers sought to determine the motions of the new arrival, to discover for it an elliptical orbit such as most comets have. But their efforts were vain, and after several months' study the conclusion was reached that here was a new planet, throwing back the limits of the solar system to a point far beyond that of the Saturnian frontier, as admitted from antiquity.