PROGRESS IN ASTRONOMICAL RESEARCH AT PACIFIC COAST OBSERVATORIES IN THE YEAR 1927-28

Abstract

A well known astronomer when asked recently to write an account of the theory of relativity for the general reader in about 1500 words, threw up his hands in horror. Absolutely impossible! It cannot be done! was his response when he was able to speak. To recount the progress of astronomy in the Pacific Area in the past year in fifteen minutes, may, I am willing to admit, not be quite so hopeless an undertaking, but it is none-the-less a difficult one. Consider the number of great observatories in the area, and the activity of the astronomers associated with them! Remember, too, that progress in observational astronomy almost always depends upon carrying out working programs, extending over years or even decades, and that the review of any one year's work necessarily involves some reference to work in preceding years and should at least hint at further researches that will inevitably follow the completion of any program. Nor can we forget that progress in astronomy, in many lines, is inseparable from progress in physics, nor that most valuable work is being done at many colleges and universities in the training of our successors. One of the most striking advances in astronomical knowledge during the year, possibly the most important one from the point of view of the astrophysicist, was made in a physical laboratory, and it is not at all impossible that the impulse to research given to some student may, in the event, prove more important than any research actually carried out during the year. As it is hopeless to try to cover the whole field, thus briefly outlined, I shall in the time at my disposal confine my-