ON THE STRUCTURE OF THE UNIVERSE 3 



It might not unnaturally be expected that the bright stars are, 

 on the average, comparatively near to us. We should therefore 

 expect them to be distributed more or less uniformly in neigh- 

 bouring space, and to exhibit no decided concentration towards 

 the galaxy ; for, if the near stars showed such a concentration, 

 it would indicate a conical structure of the universe, with our 

 solar system at the apex of the cone, and it is very improbable 

 that our solar system occupies such an exceptional position. 

 The following table exhibits the distribution of stars down to 

 various magnitude limits in nine zones of galactic latitude, each 

 20 wide : 



Table I 



The second column gives the density per square degree of 

 stars down to the visual limit of &o m. as calculated by Houzeau. 

 The third column gives the number of stars in the Bonner 

 Durchmusterung of Argelander and Schonfeld, down to a limit 

 of 9/0 m., as corrected by Seeliger to allow lor the fact that the 

 brightnesses were overestimated in regions containing only a 

 few stars, and underestimated in the denser regions. The fourth 

 column contains the densities derived from the Herschel star 

 gauges — counts of stars visible in a definite area in the field of 

 Herschel's 18-inch reflector. These include all stars down to a 

 limit of about 14*0 m. From the above table it will be seen that 

 the naked-eye stars exhibit a slight but perfectly definite 

 preference for the galaxy, indicating that a proportion of the 

 stars which are visible in the Milky Way are either really 

 situated in, and form part of it, or are in some way definitely 

 connected with it. That this is so is supported by the fact that 

 some of the brightest stars have parallaxes too small to measure. 



