68 



THE GUIDE TO NATURE. 



PoPULW^TRqNoMYJ 



The Heavens in May. 



BY GARRETT P. SERVISS, BROOKLYN, N. Y. 



The Chart shows the sky as it ap- 

 pears at 9 P. M. on the ist of the 

 month, 8 P. M. in the middle and 

 7 P. M. at the end. 



The historic comet represented this 

 month is that of 1861, one of the most 

 celebrated in the annals of astronomy. 

 The Chart shows its position on June 

 30th, nineteen days after its perihelion 

 passage. Few comets have made a 

 greater sensation, for its appearance 

 was altogether unexpected, and it came 

 up into the northern hemisphere after 

 passing perihelion, in the full blaze 

 of its splendor, with a great divided 

 tail, some of whose streamers were 

 more than a hundred degrees in 

 length. 



THE PLANETS. 



Jupiter remains the planetary king 

 of the evening sky, although the earth 

 is now drawing away from him. He 

 is seen west of the meridian, near 

 the Sickle in Leo, and in brightness 

 he far excels the brightest of the fixed 

 stars. His steady planetary light is 

 a pleasure to the eye, and no object 

 can be more interesting for the pos- 

 sessor of even the smallest telescope. 

 His great colored belts are always in 

 evidence, their appearance changing 

 from hour to hour, while the motions 

 of his four principal satellites, with 

 their eclipses, and occultations, are an 

 unending delight for the observer. 

 Even without a telescope, or any other 

 instrument, Jupiter is a fascinating ob- 

 ject to look upon, especially when we 

 reflect that he is the greatest planet 

 in our solar system, almost 1400 times 

 larger in bulk than the earth we live 

 on. His distance from the earth is 

 now, in round numbers, about 400,- 

 000,000 miles. Neptune in Gemini is, 



of course, invisible to the naked eye. 

 He can never be seen without a tele- 

 scope. Mercury, however, is now, 

 visible, reaching his greatest elong- 

 ation east of the sun on May 20th. 

 He is quite brilliant seen in the twi- 

 light after sunset. Venus has been 

 east of the sun, and consequently an 

 evening star, since April 28th, but she 

 will not become a conspicuous object 

 until later in the year. The other 

 planets are not now in the evening 

 sky. 



THE STARS AND CONSTELLATIONS. 



The whole length of the enormous 

 Hydra can now be seen, stretching 

 across the southern sky, starting with 

 the diamond-shaped head under the 

 Beehive cluster in Cancer, and rim- 

 ing under Leo, Crater, Corvus, and 

 Virgo, nearly to the eastern horizon. 

 His brightest star, the lone Alphard, 

 exhibits a reddish color. Below the 

 central and fore parts of his elongated 

 body may be seen some of the stars 

 in the rigging of the ship Argo, and be- 

 low his tail some of the stars of Centau- 

 rus. Virgo is very conspicuous in the 

 south-east, especially on account of the 

 beauty of its chief star, the pure white 

 Spica. The situation of the celebrated 

 binary, Gamma Virginis, is indicated 

 on the Chart. This is well worth 

 looking at with a telescope. The two 

 stars composing it are each of about 

 the third magnitude, and their distance 

 apart is a little less than six seconds 

 of arc. They revolve about their com- 

 mon center of gravity in a little less 

 than 200 years. A 3-inch telescope 

 shows them beautifully. Above Virgo 

 the glimmering cluster in Coma 

 Berenices is conspicuous, and east of 

 it glows great Arcturus, one of the 

 most brilliant of the fixed stars, and 

 the brightest in the constellation Bootes, 



