TO KNOW THE STARRY HEAVENS 



169 



-which, with its beautiful Pleiades and 

 Hyades, will now be seen well above 

 the ground in the northeast. The little 

 •dipper-shaped group of rather faint 

 stars which form the Pleiades is the 



Fig. 2. Showing the present positions of the plan. 

 ets Mars and Saturn. 



most noted of all star groups in the 

 heavens. Every nation had its legends 

 about this beautiful star figure, and 

 many peoples regulated their calendar 

 "by its appearance and withdrawal from 

 the evening sky. The little group can 

 easily be seen and studied now. but it 

 is November which is the Pleiad Month 

 and which marked the beginning of the 

 new year when this was determined by 

 these stars. 



The observer will probably at once 

 notice six stars in the Pleiades, but a 

 small telescope or opera glass will 

 ■greatly increase the number, while on a 

 delicate photographic plate no less than 

 two thousand have appeared. All of 

 these form a compact little group of 

 suns, which are moving through space 

 together, and it is most remarkable 

 that the principal stars of the cluster 

 are surrounded and connected together 

 with clouds and streams of faintly shin- 

 ing nebulous matter. 



Below the Pleiades there is the beau- 

 tiful A^-shaped group of the Hyades. 

 whose principal star is the great red- 

 dish Aldebaran. or Follower, so called 

 because this sun is seen to follow the 

 Pleiades across the sky as the hours 

 of the night go by. The light from this 

 star requires twenty-eight years to 

 reach us. If we represent the great 

 distance which separates the earth 

 from our sun by one inch, then the dis- 

 tance to Aldebaran, preserving the 

 same scale, will be no less than twenty- 

 seven miles. 



The Planets in October. 



Mercury which reached its greatest 



distance east of the sun on September 



27, may possibly be detected low in the 



■southwest after sunset during the first 



few davs of October, but it will soon 



be again lost in the sun's rays. On 

 October 22 it will pass to the west of 

 the sun and enter the morning sky. On 

 October 30 the planet will be nearest 

 the sun and this little world will then 

 have its season of greatest heat. At this 

 time more than twice as much light and 

 heat will be poured down upon it as it 

 will receive when it reaches its greatest 

 distance from the sun forty-four days 

 later. 



Venus is in the evening sky, but too 

 near the sun to be well observed. It 

 sets about 20 minutes after sunset on 

 October i, and this time is increased to 

 nearly an hour by the end of the month. 



^lars and Saturn are conspicuous in 

 the heavens during the late hours of the 

 night but they are still beyond the 

 borders of our evening map. The for- 

 mer is moving eastward so rapidly that 

 it passes from Gemini entirely across 

 the constellation Cancer during the 

 month ; Saturn is near the center of the 

 former constellation, in the position 

 shown in Figure 2. Jupiter is in excel- 

 lent position for observation. The most 

 interesting phenomena of its satellites 

 will be seen on the evenings of October 

 9, 15, 22, and 31. 



* ^ H= =1= * 

 The Planet Uranus. 



This great world, no less than 32,000 

 miles in diameter, is always so very far 

 away from our earth that it is never 

 more than barely visible to the naked 

 eve, and even in a moderatelv large 



• » 



• . • 



' •<: , ..• 



• «u • 



Fig. 3. The small square of Fig. 1 enlarged to 

 show the position of the planet Uranus. 



telescope it is always an inconspicuous 

 object. Yet this planet, with its very 

 strangely moving system of moons and 

 the remarkable position of its axis is 



