Scientific Intellijence^ Astronomy. 377 



lielieve that our readers will thank us for publishing a sketch of the 

 results which it contains, and which were briefly stated on the even- 

 ing already mentioned. This course will also serve to correct any 

 misconception on the subject, which the unexpected nature of the 

 communication, and the consequent absence of many of the mem- 

 bers of the Academy, may possibly have occasioned, or at least 

 allowed to arise. By an extensive and laborious comparison of the 

 quantities and directions of the proper motions of the stars in various 

 parts of the heavens, combined with indications afforded by the pa- 

 rallaxes hitherto determined, and with the theory of universal gra- 

 vitation. Professor Maedler has arrived at the conclusion that the 

 Pleiades form the central group of our whole astral or sidereal sys- 

 tem, including the Milky Way and all the brighter stars, but exclu- 

 sive of the more distant nebulae, and of the stars of which those ne- 

 bulae may be composed ; and within the central group itself he has 

 been led to fix on the star Alcyone (otherwise known by the name 

 of >j Tauria), as occupying exactly or nearly the position of the 

 centre of gravity, and as entitled to be called the central sun. As- 

 suming Bessel's parallax of the star 61 Cygni, long since remarkable 

 for its large proper motion, to be correctly determined, Msedler pro- 

 ceeds to form a first approximate estimate of the distance of this 

 central body from the planetary or solar system ; and arrives at the 

 (provisional) conclusion, that Alcyone is about 34,000,000 times as 

 far removed from us, or from our own sun, as the latter luminary is 

 from us. It would therefore, according to this estimation, be at 

 least a million times as distant as the new planet, of which the theo- 

 retical or deductive discovery has been so great and beautiful a 

 triumph of modern astronomy, and so striking a confirmation of the 

 law of Newton. The same approximate determination of distance 

 conducts to the result that the light of the central sun occupies more 

 than five centuries in travelling thence to us. The enormous orbit 

 which our own sun, with the earth and the other planets, is thus in- 

 ferred to be describing about that distant centre, not indeed under 

 its influence alone, but by the combined attraction of all the stars 

 which are nearer to it than we are, and which are estimated to 

 amount to more than 117,000,000 of masses, each equal to the 

 total mass of our own solar system, is supposed to require upwards 

 of 18,000,000 of years for its complete description, at the rate of 

 about eight geographical miles in every second of time. The plane 

 of this vast orbit of the sun, is judged to have an inclination of about 

 84 degrees to the ecliptic, or to the place of the annual orbit of 

 the earth ; and the longitude of the ascending node of the former 

 orbit in the latter is concluded to be nearly 137 degrees. The ge- 

 neral conclusions of Meedier respecting the constitution of the whole 

 system of the fixed stars, exclusive of the distant nebulae, are the 

 following : — He believes that the middle is indicated by a very rich 

 group (the Pleiades), containing many considerable individual bodies, 



