Cambridge Observatory

Next, he adjusted the characteristics of the perturbing body based on these differences and repeated the process, essentially performing a regression analysis.

Then, on February 13, 1844, James Challis, director of the Cambridge Observatory, contacted Astronomer Royal George Biddell Airy at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich and requested data on the position of Uranus for Adams.

On September 1, 1845, Eugène Bouvard, Alexis Bouvard's nephew, presents new tables of Uranus to the Paris Academy.

And on September 22nd, François Arago of the Paris Observatory asked Urbain Le Verrier to investigate the Uranus orbital perturbations.

The members of the Gun Club, a circle of artillerymen formed at Baltimore after the American War, conceived the idea of putting themselves in communication with the moon, yes, with the moon, by sending to her a projectile.

Their president, Barbicane, the promoter of the enterprise, having consulted the astronomers of the Cambridge Observatory upon the subject, took all necessary means to ensure the success of this extraordinary enterprise, which had been declared practicable by the majority of competent judges.

After setting on foot a public subscription, which realized nearly one million two hundred thousand dollars, they began the gigantic work.

According to the advice forwarded from the members of the observatory, the gun destined to launch the projectile had to be fixed in a country situated between the zero and twenty-eighth degrees of north or south latitude, in order to aim at the moon when at the zenith, and its initiatory velocity was fixed at twelve thousand yards to the second.

Consequently, their arrival on the lunar disc could not take place until the fifth December at twelve at night, at the exact moment when the moon should be full, and not on the fourth, as some badly informed journals had announced.

But an unforeseen circumstance, that is, the detonation produced by the Columbiad, had the immediate effect of troubling the terrestrial atmosphere by accumulating a large quantity of vapor, a phenomenon which excited universal indignation, for the moon was hidden from the eyes of the watchers for several nights.

The worthy Joseph T. Maston, the staunchest friend of the three travelers, started for the Rocky Mountains, accompanied by the Honorable J. Belfast, director of the Cambridge Observatory, and reached the station of Long's Peak, where the telescope was erected which brought the moon within an apparent distance of two leagues.

The Honorable Secretary of the Gun Club wished himself to observe the vehicle of his daring friends.