PLEASURES OF THE TELESCOPE. 



297 



From Lepus we pass to Canis Major (map No. 2). There is no 

 hope of our being able to see the companion of a (Sirius), at present 

 (1894), even with our five-inch. Discovered by Alvan Clark with 



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an eighteen-inch telescope in 1863, when its distance was 10" from 

 the center of Sirius, this ninth-magnitude star has since been 

 swallowed up in the blaze of its great primary. It at first slightly 

 increased its distance, and from 1868 until 1879 most of the meas- 



