264 



THE GUIDE TO NATURE 



The Heavens in February. 



BY PROF. ERIC DOOUTTLE OF THE UNI- 

 VERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 



It is on the early evenings of Febru- 

 ary that we see the wonderful winter 

 sky in its greatest brilliancy. The mag- 

 nificent Orion, the great Taurus, the 

 bright Twin stars, and the very bril- 

 liant Dog Stars are all high in the 

 south, and these, together with the 

 bright Capella overhead, and the group 

 Leo, which has now mounted high in 

 the east, unite to make the February 

 evening heavens the brightest of the 

 entire year. With the aid of Figure 1, 

 the observer will have no difficulty in 

 tracing out these brighter groups of the 

 sky, and having found these he may 

 next become familiar with the many 

 remaining groups, which though so 

 much fainter are no less interesting. 



THE FEBRUARY STARS. 



This is the most favorable time of the 

 3'ear in which to examine the two little 

 groups, Lepus and Colnmba, which 

 both lie directly below the bright 

 Orion. The former has been known as 

 the Hare from the earliest times, and 

 the reason why so timid an animal 

 should have been placed at the feet 

 of the mighty Hunter has been much 

 discussed. But as the Hare has been 

 associated with the moon from the 

 very earliest times, — possibly because 

 the dimly outlined figure on the nearly 

 full moon strongly resembles this ani- 

 mal. — and as the Hunter was a solar 

 type, their close association hi :he -k-\ 

 was to have been expected. A short 

 distance to the left of Lepus there al- 

 ways follows the brilliant Dog Star, 

 which 



"Behind him ever speeds as in 



pursuit, and rises after, 

 And eyes him as he sets." 



Below Lepus is the pretty little 

 group of Columba, or Noah's Dove, — a 

 modern constellation, — and to the left 

 of this are the numerous faint, stars 

 which form the constellation of the 



Larger Dog. Of these Sirius, that great 

 sun four times as large as our own sun, 

 is of course by far the largest and is 

 the only one familiar to most observers. 

 Yet there is much else of interest in the 

 constellation. At the point C, almost 

 midway between the stars A and B, 

 there is a magnificent cluster of stars 

 just visible to the naked eye, while all 

 of the stars marked D are double stars 

 which are readily visible in a small 

 telescope. The star at A was known 

 to the Arabians as the Announcer, be- 

 cause its rising foretold the appearance 

 of the far brighter Sirius. 



In the group Lepus, the possessor 

 of a small telescope should examine the 

 stars at F, which are interesting, 

 doubles, and also the remarkable red 

 star at E, a short distance to the right 

 of N, which is the reddest star of the 

 heavens. At K, forming a nearly equal 

 sided triangle with the stars L and N 

 there is also an interesting cluster, 

 which in a small telescope appears 

 merely as a fai/illy saining nebuloiVs 

 cloud. 



To the left of the Greater Dog we 

 may see a few of the uppermost stars 

 of the great constellation Argo, which 

 covers a large space in the southern 

 heavens. In this constellation is a 

 wonderful variable star, noted as one 

 of the most striking obje.cts in the 

 heavens even among the very earliest 

 people from whom records have come 

 down to us. This remarkable object 

 varies from the first to the seventh 

 magnitudes in a very irregular manner. 

 Its light is now slowly increasing. 

 Here too is the wonderfully bright 

 Canopus, which by many observers is 

 thought to equal or even to exceed 

 Sirius in brilliancy. And it is a most 

 remarkable fact that the wonderful 

 brightness of this star is not caused 

 by its nearness to us. The most refined 

 observations fail to show any displace- 

 ment of its position in the heavens due 

 to our own motion around the sun, and 



