(1833) of about 2500, of which some 500 were new and 2000 were his father's, a few being due to other observers; incidentally more than 3000 pairs of stars close enough together to be worth recording as double stars were observed.
307. Then followed his well-known expedition to the Cape of Good Hope (1833–1838), where he "swept" the southern skies in very much the same way in which his father had explored the regions visible in our latitude. Some 1200 double and multiple stars, and a rather larger number of new nebulae, were discovered and studied, while about 500 known nebulae were re-observed; star-gauging on William Herschel's lines was also carried out on an extensive scale. A number of special observations of interest were made almost incidentally during this survey: the remarkable variable star η Argus and the nebula surrounding it (a modern photograph of which is reproduced in fig. 100), the wonderful collections of nebulae clusters and stars, known as the Nubeculae or Magellanic Clouds, and Halley's comet were studied in turn; and the two faintest satellites of Saturn then known (chapter xii., § 255) were seen again for the first time since the death of their discoverer.
An important investigation of a somewhat different character—that of the amount of heat received from the sun—was also carried out (1837) during Herschel's residence at the Cape; and the result agreed satisfactorily with that of an independent inquiry made at the same time in France by Claude Servais Mathias Pouillet (1791–1868). In both cases the heat received on a given area of the earth in a given time from direct sunshine was measured; and allowance being made for the heat stopped in the atmosphere as the sun's rays passed through it, an estimate was formed of the total amount of heat received annually by the earth from the sun, and hence of the total amount radiated by the sun in all directions, an insignificant fraction of which (one part in 2,000,000,000) is alone intercepted by the earth. But the allowance for the heat intercepted in our atmosphere was necessarily uncertain, and later work, in particular that of Dr. S. P. Langley in 1880–81, shews that it was very much under-estimated by both Herschel and Pouillet. According to Herschel's results, the heat received annually from the sun—including that intercepted in the
