It has been stated that at the beginning of the century there were
no permanent observatories either in the southern hemisphere or in
the United States. The end of the century finds us with two hundred
observatories all told, of which fourteen are south of the equator
and forty-seven in the United States, among which latter are the
best-equipped and most active in the world.
The observatory of Parramatta was the first established (1821) in the
southern hemisphere. This was followed by that at the Cape of Good Hope
in 1829. Of the more modern southern observatories from which the best
work has come we may mention Cordova, the seat of Gould’s important
investigations, established in 1868, and Arequipa, a dependency of
Harvard, whence the spectra of the southern stars have been secured,
erected still more recently (1881).
I believe, but I do not know, that the large number of American
observatories have radiated from Cincinnati, where, in consequence of
eloquent appeals, both by voice and pen, from Mitchell, then professor
of astronomy, an observatory was commenced in 1845. There can be no
doubt that at the present moment, with the numerous well-equipped and
active observatories, and the careful and thorough teaching established
side by side with them, which enables numberless students to use the
various instruments, the United States, in matters astronomical, fills
the position occupied by Germany at the beginning of the century.
In Europe special observatories have been established at Meudon,
Kensington, and Potsdam, so that new astrophysical inquiries may be
undertaken without interfering with the prosecution or extension of the
important meridional work carried on at Paris, Greenwich, and Berlin.
A large proportion of the observations made by the Lick and Yerkes
observatories in the United States has been astrophysical.
One of the special inquiries committed to the charge of the Solar
Physics Observatory at Kensington at its establishment by the
British government had relation to the possibility of running home
meteorological changes on the earth, especially those followed by
drought and famines in various parts of the empire, to the varying
changes in the sun indicated by the ebb and flow of spots on its
surface. With this end in view observations of the sun were commenced
in India and the Mauritius to supplement those taken at Greenwich. At
the same time other daily observations of sun spots by a different
method were commenced at Kensington.
This kind of work was at first considered ideally useless; we shall see
later on what has become of it.