474 ^^^ POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the cosmical wrack througli which it had driven remained glow- 

 ing with nebulous luminosity ? Such an explanation has been 

 offered by Seeliger. Or was Vogel right when he suggested that 

 Nova Aurigse could be accounted for by supposing that a wander- 

 ing dark body had run into collision with a system of planets 

 surrounding a decrepit sun (and therefore it is to be hoped unin- 

 habited), and that those planets had been reduced to vapor and 

 sent spinning by the encounter, the second outburst of light being 

 caused by an outlying planet of the system falling a prey to the 

 vagabond destroyer ? Or some may prefer the explanation, based 

 on a theory of Wilsing's, that hvo great bodies, partially or wholly 

 opaque and nonluminous at their surfaces, but liquid hot within, 

 approached one another so closely that the tremendous strain 

 of their tidal attraction burst their shells asunder so that their 

 bowels of fire gushed briefly visible, amid a blaze of spouting 

 vapors. And yet Lockyer thinks that there was no solid or semi- 

 solid mass concerned in the phenomenon at all, but that what 

 occurred was simply the clash of two immense swarms of meteors 

 that had crossed one another's track. 



Well, where nobody positively knows, everybody has free 

 choice. In the meantime, look at the spot in the sky where that 

 little star made its appearance and underwent its marvelous 

 transformation, for, even if you can see no remains of it there, 

 you will feel your interest in the problem it has presented, and in 

 the whole subject of astronomy, greatly heightened and vivified, 

 as the visitor to the field of Waterloo becomes a lover of history 

 on the spot. 



The remaining objects of special interest in Auriga may be 

 briefly mentioned : 26, triple star, magnitudes five, eight, and 

 eleven, distances 13", p. 268, and 26", p. 113; 14, triple star, mag- 

 nitudes five, seven and a half, and eleven, distances 14", p. 224, 

 and 12'6", p. 342, the last difficult for moderate apertures ; A, 

 double, magnitudes five and nine, distance 121", p. 13 ; e, variable, 

 generally of third magnitude, but has been seen of only four and 

 a half magnitude ; 41, double, magnitudes five and six, distance 

 8", p. 354 ; 990, 1007, 1119, and 1100, clusters all well worth inspec- 

 tion, 1119 being especially beautiful. 



The inconspicuous Lynx furnishes some fine telescopic objects, 

 all grouped near the northwestern corner of the constellation. 

 Without a six-inch telescope it would be a waste of time to attack 

 the double star 4, whose components are of sixth and eighth mag- 

 nitudes, distance 0*8", p. 103; but its neighbor, 5, a fine triple, is 

 within our reach, the magnitudes being six, ten, and eight, dis- 

 tances 30", p. 139, and 90", p. 272. In 12 Lyncis we find one of 

 the most attractive of triple stars, which in good seeing weather 

 is not beyond the powers of a three-inch glass, although we shall 



