THE HEAVENS 



I?*- 



clays past its first quarter. The large 

 polar cap may still be readily detected, 

 but the planet is now so very far away 

 that no other details can be well seen. 



Saturn is now low in the west, and 

 toward the close of the month will be 

 wholly lost in the sun's rays. It will 

 not definitely leave the evening sky. 

 however, until May 14. 



Jupiter is moving slowly westward 

 in the constellation of the Scorpion, 

 and though in the early morning hours 

 it is a beautiful and conspicuous ob- 

 ject, riding high in the southern 

 heavens, it has not yet reached the 

 borders of our evening chart. It is 

 due east of the star A, Figure 1, rising 

 at 11 o'clock on April 1 and at a few 

 minutes past 9 o'clock on April 30. An 



serving the star shower it is therefore 

 best to select a late hour of the even- 

 ing, even deferring the observation 

 until after midnight, if possible. 



The greatest number of shooting 

 stars will be seen on the evenings ol 

 April 20, 21 and 22, and this year we 

 have an unusually favorable oppor- 

 tunity for observing them, since the 

 moon on these dates is nearly new. If, 

 late in the evening, the observer will 

 turn to the constellation Lyra, he will 

 see every few minutes a bluish, very 

 swiftly moving star dart outward from 

 near the point S, Figure 1, and move 

 in any direction across the sky, while 

 it may be that at times two or three 

 shooting stars will suddenly appear at 

 once. The shower will continue all 



Figure 3. — Showing the regions within which the solar eclipse of April 17 may be seen. 



interesting eclipse of its third moon 

 may be observed on the morning of 

 April 29, the moon disappearing at I 

 hour 58 minutes 22 seconds, A. M. 

 (Eastern standard time), and emerging 

 from the shadow 2 hours 10 minutes 

 39 seconds later. 



THE APRIL SHOOTING STARS. 



This is the month when there oc- 

 curs the bright shower of shooting 

 stars known as the Lyrids, this name 

 being given to them because they are 

 seen to dart outward in all directions 

 from the constellation of Lyra, or the 

 Harp. This beautiful constellation, 

 with its very brilliant, blue star Vega, 

 may be seen just rising in the north- 

 east in the early evenings of April, 

 while throughout the latter half of the 

 night it is high in the heavens. In ob- 



through the three nights and during 

 the days as well, though when the sun 

 is shining we can, of course, not see the 

 stars. 



The stars of this or of any shower 

 are a great stream of meteoric particles 

 moving about our sun, through which 

 the earth plows once each year. Each 

 swiftly moving particle as it collides 

 with our earth is burnt up by the fric- 

 tion of its motion through our protect- 

 ing air and the burning particle is what 

 we see as a shooting star. That all the 

 stars of any shower appear to move 

 outward from one little area in the sky 

 is merely the effect of perspective ; the 

 area is the vanishing point of the par- 

 allel paths in which the particles move. 

 The present shower is the remains of 

 the first comet of 1861. 



