New Orrery Print E-mail
Whitehaven Gazette - Oct. 18, 1819
NEW ORRERY.

      
       The Rev. G. GOUGH, of Ayton, has lately constructed an Orrery of much
improved form which exhibits great ingenuity and mechanical skill. It consists
of a large glass globe mounted on a brazen stand, and splendidly illuminated
with circles, golden stars &c., which exhibit an interesting picture of the
heavens, and at the same time containing within it all the planets and
satellites, adjusted to true time according to the latest discoveries.

       It displays the solar system in motion, together with its relation to
the celestial sphere as in nature. The movement being enclosed within the
glass globe are thus effectually secured from injury and the beauty of the
mechanism is preserved from tarnishing by its not being exposed to the external air.
The motions are conveyed through slender tubes, and hollow pillars, and arms
in such a manner as to conceal from view the clumsy appendages of large wheels,
and almost every other part of the apparatus except the heavenly bodies
themselves moving in order round their respective centres.

       The diurnal revolutions and those of the satellites  can be
disconnected at pleasure, in order to exhibit a more rapid circulation of the planets in
the ecliptic in their true proportional periods, whereby even the slow motion
of the Georgium Sidus is rendered visible to the eye.

       When such exhibitions are not required to be made, the whole may be
kept in motion by a small time piece; and thus the Orrery becomes a perpetual
ephemeris, representing, on inspection the thus position of the planets, the
phenomenon of their seasons, occasioned by the inclination and parallelism of
their axes so far as known, the lunar phases, eclipses, &c.

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