No one, unless he has previously worked without such an arrangement, can fully appreciate the advantage of bringing up a star to bisection by moving a micrometer with a delicate screw-motion, instead of having to change the direction of the axis of a huge telescope for the same purpose.
Struve's skill as an observer was such that he used to complete the bisection on the fixed wire of the micrometer by a pressure of the finger on the side of the tube - a method of proved efficiency in such hands, but plainly indicative of the want of rigidity in the instrument and of the imperfection of the slow motions (see Micrometer).
Thus, if the star's image is kept in bisection by the wire, both star and wire will appear at rest in the field of view.
The advantage of approximate bisection lies in the superior brilliancy of the surviving spectra; but in any case the compound grating may be considered to be perfect in the longer interval, and the definition is as good as if the bisection were accurate.
When the star enters the field of view its image is approximately bisected by the spider web of the micrometer n, the exact bisection being completed in the immediate neighbourhood of the meridian.
