294 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



nebula. These four stars are collectively named the Trapezium, 

 The brightest is of the sixth magnitude, the others are of the 

 seventh, seven and a half, and eighth magnitudes respectively. 

 The radiant mist about them has a faint greenish tinge, while 

 the four stars, together with three others at no great distance, 

 which follow a fold of the nebula like a row of buttons on a coat, 

 always appear to me to show an extraordinary liveliness of radi- 

 ance, as if the strange haze served to set them off. 



Our three-inch would have shown the four stars of the Tra- 

 pezium perfectly well, and the four-inch would have revealed a 

 fifth star, very faint, outside a line joining the smallest of the 

 f(mr and its nearest neighbor. But the five-inch goes a step 

 farther and enables us, with steady gazing, to see even a sixth 

 star, of only the twelfth magnitude, just outside the Trapezium, 



near the brightest mem- 

 ber of the quartet. The 

 Lick telescope has dis- 

 closed one or two other 

 minute points of light as- 

 sociated with the Trape- 

 zium, But more interest- 

 ing than the Trapezium is 

 the vast cloud, full of 

 strange shapes, surround- 

 ing it. Nowhere else in 

 the heavens is the archi- 



TnE Trapezium with the Fifth and Sixth Stars, tecture of a nebula SO 



clearly displayed. It is an 

 unfinished temple whose gigantic dimensions, while exalting the 

 imagination, proclaim the omnipotence of its builder. But though 

 unfinished it is not abandoned. The work of creation is proceed- 

 ing within its precincts. There are stars apparently completed, 

 shining like gems just dropped from the hand of the polisher, 

 and around them are masses, eddies, currents, and swirls of nebu- 

 lous matter yet to be condensed, compacted, and constructed into 

 suns. It is an education in the nebular theory of the universe 

 merely to look at this spot with a good telescope. If we do not 

 gaze at it long and wistfully, and return to it many times with 

 unflagging interest, we may be certain that there is not the mak- 

 ing of an astronomer in us. 



Before quitting the Orion nebula do not fail to notice an eighth- 

 magnitude star, a short distance northeast of the Great Nebula, 

 and nearly opposite the broad opening in the latter that leads in 

 toward the gap occupied by the Trapezium. This star is plainly 

 enveloped in nebulosity, that is unquestionably connected with 

 the larger mass of which it appears to form a satellite. 



