Inferences suggested by examination of the Photographs

Summary

The next step to be taken is to verify the accuracy of the above statements regarding the grouping of the stars into lines and curves; assuming that the examiner has, like myself, been convinced of their reality. As a test of this, as well as an example let us examine Plates 2 to 9, upon which the eye readily detects many groups of stars arranged in lines and in curves, each of them containing several stars; similar configurations to these can be seen on the other plates, and if I had chosen to print hundreds of others that are in my cabinets, each covering four square degrees in the sky, similar configurations would be seen upon them.

This persistency of the lines and curves of stars on the plates leaves no room for doubt that they are the effects of physical causes, and cannot be due to coincidence only; and when the photographs of the spiral and other nebulæ are examined a reasonable explanation of the formation of the curves and lines will be made manifest.

It is not my intention to submit elaborate arguments, or mathematical formulæ, in the discussion of the photographic evidence contained in this and in the first volume of my photographs–these will in the future, when a sufficient interval of time has elapsed, occupy the thoughts of the correlators, the measurers, the computers and of the mathematicians–my aim is now to point out the evidence, and the relationships to each other of the several classes of objects that are found depicted, untouched by hand-work, upon the photographs.