POPULAR ASTRONOMY 



377 



THE STARS AND CONSTELLATIONS. 



Every eye is now drawn irresistibly 

 to the great constellation Orion, situa- 

 ted about an hour east of the meridian. 

 The rising" of Orion is one of the most 

 imposing spectacles that the heavens 

 afford. In ancient times the appear- 

 ance of this constellation was always 

 associated with the coming of the sea- 

 son of storms and tempests. Ilesiod 

 wrote : 



" then the winds war aloud. 



And veil the ocean with a sable cloud." 



The splendor of his two great first 

 magnitude stars, Rigel in the foot 

 and Betelgeuse in the shoulder, is 

 alone enough to make this constellation 

 a cynosure for all eyes, to say nothing 

 of the marvelous beauty of the three 

 matched stars that form the belt of the 

 imaginary giant. High above, toward 

 the West, blazes the bull, Taurus, with 

 the gleaming cluster of the Pleiades 

 shaking upon his flank and the red 

 Aldebaran aflame in his eye as he rush- 

 es down upon Orion. Lower than 

 Orion in the East appears the unri- 

 valled Sirius in the mouth of the Great 

 Dog, who follows after Orion. As one 

 looks at the brilliant "Dogstar," flash- 

 ing all the colors of the spectrum, one 

 cannot help recalling the remarkable his- 

 tory of that star which was worship- 

 peel on the banks of the Nile long 

 before Rome had been heard of, and 

 in whose honor were erected temples 

 whose magnificence and magnitude 

 produce astonishment even in this age 

 of architectural extravagance. Direct- 

 ly in the South, flowing first westward 

 from the foot of Orion and then turn- 

 ing eastward, is Eridanus, the "River." 

 Its stars are so arranged that they 

 produce unmistakably the appearance 

 of a stream in the sky. Away over 

 in the West appears Cetus, the Whale, 

 one of the most extensive of the con- 

 stellations, but containing few stars 

 bright enough to attract snecial at- 

 tention. The Great Square of Pegasus, 

 with Saturn below it. is half way down 

 the western sky. Running eastward 

 from the corner of the Square is the 

 row of second magnitude stars which 

 mark the figure of Andromeda. East 

 of Andromeda comes Perseus, and 

 southeast of Perseus, buried in the 



Milky Way, appears Auriga, orna- 

 mented with the great white star Ca- 

 pella. Capella is directly north of 

 ( )rion, and about half way from the 

 head of that constellation to the Pole 

 Star. Southeast of Capella come the 

 Twins, Gemini, with the brilliant Pro- 

 cyon, in Canis Minor, below them. 

 Still further down in the East, below 

 Gemini, is Cancer, the Crab, remark- 

 able for its glimmering cluster called 

 the "Manger." The Great Dipper, in 

 Ursa Major, stands upright on its han- 

 dle low down in the northeast, while 

 Cassiopeia, which always swings round 

 the pole directly opposite to the Dip- 

 per, is high up in the northwest, above 

 Andromeda. 



"From all quarters," wrote the Greek 

 poet Aratus, whom St. Paul quoted, 

 "the Heavens speak to Man," and sure- 

 ly at no season do they speak more 

 plainly or more eloquently and impos- 

 ingly than at this season, when they 

 are ablaze with their brightest bril- 

 liants. 



At the beginning of January the earth 

 is in perihelion, or at its point of near- 

 est approach to the sun. We are now 

 3,000,000 miles nearer the sun than we 

 were in July, and yet it is winter for 

 us, simply because the Northern hemi- 

 sphere now leans away from the sun, 

 so that its rays fall slooingly upon us 

 here, and are consequently spread over 

 so much greater an area that their 

 heating power is less. In the South- 

 ern hemisphere the case is exactly re- 

 versed, for there the sun's rays now 

 fall more perpendicularly, and a pro- 

 portionately greater number of them 

 are spread over a given area of the 

 earth's surface. Perpetual night now 

 reigns at the North Pole and perpet- 

 ual day at the South Pole. 



How many have the gift of seeing 

 things? This faculty may be culti- 

 vated as well as the memory, and to 

 better advantage. That man who can 

 discover some original beauty and ver- 

 ity for himself, see it with his own 

 eyes and not through the eyes of an- 

 other, is not without resource so long 

 as he live. — The Ministry of Beauty, 

 Kirkham. 



