"Fred Hoyle - The Black Cloud" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hoyle Fred)

up from Jensen's first plate, the one taken on the night of 9th December, 1963.
 "The centre of the dark blob," went on Marlowe, "is in Right Ascension 5 hours
49 minutes, Declination minus 30 degrees 16 minutes, as near as I can judge."
"A fine example of a Bok globule," said Barnett.
"How big is it?"
"About two and half degrees across."
There were gasps from several of the astronomers.
"Geoff, you can keep your bottle of whisky," said Harvey Smith.
"And my crate, too," added Bill Barnett amidst the general laughter.
"I reckon you'll be needing the whisky when you see the next plate. Bert, keep
rocking the two backwards and forwards, so that we can get some idea of a
comparison," went on Marlowe.
"It's fantastic," burst out Rogers, "it looks as if there's a whole ring of
oscillating stars surrounding the cloud. But how could that be?"
"It can't," answered Marlowe. "That's what I saw straight away. Even if we
admit the unlikely hypothesis that this cloud is surrounded by a halo of variable
stars, it is surely quite inconceivable that they'd all oscillate in phase with each
other, all up together as in the first slide, and all down together in the second."
"No, that's preposterous," broke in Barnett. "If we're to take it that there's
been no slip-up in the photography, then surely there's only one possible
explanation. The cloud is moving towards us. In the second slide it's nearer to us,
and therefore it's obscuring more of the distant stars. At what interval apart were
the two plates taken?"
"Rather less than a month."
"Then there must be something wrong with the photography."
"That's exactly the way I reasoned last night. But as I couldn't see anything
wrong with the plates, the obvious thing was to take some new pictures. If a
month made all that difference between Jensen's first plate and his second, then
the effect should have been easily detectable in a week - Jensen's last plate was
taken on 7th January. Yesterday was 14th January. So I rushed up to Mount
Wilson, bullied Harvey off the 60-inch, and spent the night photographing the
edges of the cloud. I've got a whole collection of new slides here. They're not of
course on the same scale as Jensen's plates, but you'll be able to see pretty well
what's happening. Put them through one by one, Bert, and keep referring back to
Jensen's plate of 7th January."
There was almost dead silence for the next quarter of an hour, as the star
fields on the edge of the cloud were carefully compared by the assembled
astronomers. At the end Barnett said:
"I give up. As far as I'm concerned there isn't a shadow of a doubt but that
this cloud is travelling towards us."
And it was clear that he had expressed the conviction of the meeting. The
stars at the edge of the cloud were being steadily blacked out as it advanced
towards the solar system.
"Actually there's no doubt at all about it," went on Marlowe. "When I discussed
things with Dr. Herrick earlier this morning he pointed out that we have a
photograph taken twenty years ago of this part of the sky."
Herrick produced the photograph.
"We haven't had time to make up a slide," said he, "so you will have to hand it
round. You can see the black cloud, but it's small on this picture, no more than a
tiny globule. I've marked it with an arrow."