own at Wansted, so arranged that it was possible to observe through it the motions of stars other than γ Draconis.
Several stars were watched carefully throughout a year, and the observations thus obtained gave Bradley a fairly complete knowledge of the geometrical laws according to which the motions varied both from star to star and in the course of the year.
208. The true explanation of aberration, as the phenomenon in question was afterwards called, appears to have occurred to him about September, 1728, and was published to the Royal Society, after some further verification, early in the following year. According to a well-known story,[1] he noticed, while sailing on the Thames, that a vane on the masthead appeared to change its direction every time that the boat altered its course, and was informed by the sailors that this change was not due to any alteration in the wind's direction, but to that of the boat's course. In fact the apparent direction of the wind, as shewn by the vane, was not the true direction of the wind, but resulted from a combination of the motions of the wind and of the boat, being more precisely that of the motion of the wind relative to the boat. Replacing in imagination the wind by light coming from a star, and the boat shifting its course by the earth moving round the sun and continually changing its direction of motion, Bradley arrived at an explanation which, when worked out in detail, was found to account most satisfactorily for the apparent changes in the direction of a star which he had been studying. His own account of the matter is as follows:—
- ↑ The story is given in T. Thomson's History of the Royal Society, published more than 80 years afterwards (1812), but I have not been able to find any earlier authority for it. Bradley's own account of his discovery gives a number of details, but has no allusion to this incident.
