784 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



vations could not have been very extensive or very carefully con- 

 ducted, for there are many double stars much wider than 7 

 Arietis which Hooke could certainly have separated if he had 

 examined them. The magnitudes of the components of 7 are 

 four and four and a half, or, according to Hall, both four ; 

 distance 8'5", p. 180. A few degrees above 7, passing by /3, is a 

 wide double A, magnitudes five and eight, distance 37", p. 45, 

 colors white and lilac or violet. Three stars are to be seen in 14 : 

 magnitudes five and a half, ten, and nine, distances 83", p. 3G, and 

 10G", p. 278, colors white, blue, and lilac. The star 30 is a very 

 pretty double, magnitudes six and seven, distance 38'6", p. 273. 

 % 289 consists of a topaz star combined with a sapphire, magni- 

 tudes six and nine, distance 28*5", p. 0. The fourth-magnitude 

 star 41 has several faint companions. The magnitudes of two of 

 these are eleven and nine, distances 34", p. 203, and 130", p. 230. 

 "We discover another triple in *, magnitudes five, eight, and eleven, 

 distances 3'24", p. 122, and 25", p. 110. The double mentioned 

 above as being too close for our three-inch glass is c, which, how- 

 ever, can be divided with the four-inch, although the five-inch 

 will serve us better. The magnitudes are five and a half and six, 

 distance 1'26", p. 202. The star 52 has two companions, one of 

 which is so close that our instruments can not separate it, while 

 the other is too faint to be visible in the light of its brilliant 

 neighbor without the aid of a very powerful telescope. 



We are now about to enter one of the most magnificent regions 

 in the sky, which is hardly less attractive to the naked eye than 

 Orion, and which men must have admired from the beginning of 

 their history on the earth, the constellation Taurus (map No. 

 23). Two groups of stars especially distinguish Taurus, the Hy- 

 ades and the Pleiades, and both are exceedingly interesting when 

 viewed with the lowest magnifying powers of our telescopes. 



We shall begin with a little star just west of the Pleiades, 2 

 412, also called 7 Tauri. This is a triple, but we can only see it as 

 a double, the third star being exceedingly close to the primary. 

 The magnitudes are six and a half, seven, and ten, distances 0"3", 

 p. 216, and 22", p. 62. In the Pleiades we naturally turn to the 

 brightest star 17, or Alcyone, famous for having once been re- 

 garded as the central sun around which our sun and a multitude 

 of other luminaries were supposed to revolve, and picturesque on 

 account of the little triangle of small stars near it which the least 

 telescopic assistance enables us to see. One may derive much 

 pleasure from a study of the various groupings of stars in the 

 Pleiades. Photography has demonstrated, what had long been 

 suspected from occasional glimpses revealed by the telescope, that 

 this celebrated cluster of stars is intermingled with curious forms 

 of nebulae. The nebulous matter appears in festoons, apparently 



