Our Astronomical Column

Abstract

HARVARD COLLEGE OBSERVATORY REPORT.—In this, the forty-eighth annual report to the President of the University, Prof. Pickering, the director of the Astronomical Observatory of Harvard College, has a fine record of work to refer to, which has been carried out during the twelve months ending October 31,1893. We make the following brief extracts from the accounts given of the various branches of work done in the several departments. The East Equatorial was on the whole worked by Mr. O. C.Wendell, and employed for the systematic observation of variable stars upon the system lately adopted. Photometric observations of Jupiter's satellites (twenty-five in number) were made; forty-eight series of wedge photometer observations (3354 measurements) for determining the brightness of 1118 stars occurring in the Durchmusterung, were also made. Among other uses of this instrument were the observations of comets, measurements with the polarising photometer, &c. The Meridian Circle has been, as usual, at work under the direction of Prof. W. Rogers, while good progress has been made in the reductions of the observations of the southern stars with the meridian photometer. The observing list for the latter observations contains about 6000 stars, and excluding the 4000 already contained in the Harvard Photometry, three quarters have now been made. Mr. W. Reed, with the West Equatorial, on eighty-seven evenings has made observations on variable stars (489), comparison stars (1318), and ten on the brightness of Comet Holmes.