The little observatory of Captain
Gilliss was replaced by the Naval, then called the National
Observatory, erected at Washington during the years 1843-44, and
fitted out with what were then the most approved instruments.
About the same time the appearance of the great comet of 1843 led
the citizens of Boston to erect the observatory of Harvard
College. Thus it is little more than a half-century since the two
principal observatories in the United States were established. But
we must not for a moment suppose that the mere erection of an
observatory can mark an epoch in scientific history. What must
make the decade of which I speak ever memorable in American
astronomy was not merely the erection of buildings, but the
character of the work done by astronomers away from them as well
as in them.
The National Observatory soon became famous by two remarkable
steps which raised our country to an important position among
those applying modern science to practical uses. One of these
consisted of the researches of Sears Cook Walker on the motion of
the newly discovered planet Neptune. He was the first astronomer
to determine fairly good elements of the orbit of that planet,
and, what is yet more remarkable, he was able to trace back the
movement of the planet in the heavens for half a century and to
show that it had been observed as a fixed star by Lalande in 1795,
without the observer having any suspicion of the true character of
the object.
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