TO KNOW" TIIF. STARRY HEA\'E.\S 



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months ago ; the gradual transformation 

 of the winter into the summer skies is 

 already clearly under waw 



Meanwhile no less than three of the 

 "Wandering Stars," or planets, still shine 

 brightly in our evening heavens. Jupiter 

 has indeed drawn too near the sun to be 

 observed, but in the west we see the 

 exceedingly brilliant \'enus ; the beautiful 

 and always interesting Saturn is high in 

 the south, while only a little way to the 

 east of the meridian our attention is at 

 once attracted by the lurid, almost omin- 

 ous, light of the red planet ]\lars. 



The Planet Mars. 



Next to \'enus, this beautiful world is 

 now the most conspicuous object in the 

 evening skies. It will be found almost 

 exactly due south in the early evening, 

 very near the border line between the 

 groups Cancer and Leo. This planet is 

 now nearly three times as bright as the 

 golden Saturn near-by and it is six times 

 as bright as the neighboring bluish star, 

 Regulus ; the silvery Venus, however, far 

 exceeds it, for this, our Sister World, 

 now shines in the west with fifteen times 

 the brightness of the planet j\Iars. 



The reader who has been watching the 

 interesting motions of our evening plan- 

 ets will remember how very rapidly Alars 

 ran eastward across the constellations 

 until by January i it had advanced well 

 into Leo and how since that time it has 

 been moving slowly westward again. 

 This westward — or retrograde — motion 

 will cease and the planet begin again to 

 move eastward on the twenty-second of 

 the present month, but throughout all of 

 March Mars will change its position 

 among the stars but very little. 



Even in a small telescope the white 

 Polar Caps, of this planet are very dis- 

 tinctly visible, while if the seeing is good 

 one may detect the Hour Glass Sea. the 

 Lake of the Sun, the Great South Sea 

 and a few other of the larger surface 

 markings. But, nevertheless, except in 

 the largest glasses, this interesting little 

 world is a rather disappointing object. 

 ]\Tars is so small a world, being only 4230 

 miles in diameter, that even at the best 

 it looks far smaller than the very much 

 larger, though far more distant. Jupiter. 

 And besides this, its markings appear 

 rather as indistinct and difiicult shadings 

 in contrast to the conspicuous and sharplv 

 cut markings of the larger planet. 



Yet there is a special pleasure in a pro- 

 longed examination of a difificult object 

 of this kind. If the observer will devote 

 perhaps an hour or more to this task, try- 

 ing different powers and patiently wait- 

 ing for moments of unusual seeing, he 

 will gradually detect many more details 

 than he would have supposed possible 

 from a first brief view. 



A very little watching will show him 

 that this world is turning around — the 



Figure 2. Showing- the positions of the Earth, the 

 Sun and Mars when the two planets were this year 

 nearly together. If the Earth passes Mars when the 

 planets are in the region marked R, the approach is 

 evidently a much closer one. 



day on Alars being but thirty-seven min- 

 utes longer than our own. Spring, sum- 

 mer, autumn and winter also succeed one 

 another on the Red Planet, just as they 

 do with us. In the northern hemisphere 

 of the planet the sun is now as high in the 

 heavens as it is with us in May. Here 

 the summer is at hand, their longest day 

 — or Summer Solstice — occurring (ac- 

 cording to our earth-calendar) during 

 the first week of next May. In the south- 

 ern hemisphere of the planet winter is 

 now advancing. Accordingly the south 

 polar cap is now large and is growing 

 larger, while the cap around the north 

 pole is melting away. 



Nearly the whole northern hemisphere 

 of the planet is of a yellow or orange 

 shade, while the so-called seas are of a 

 grayish or greenish color. It is now 

 practically certain that the former are 

 great desert regions ; the latter are cer- 

 tainly not water — as was at first thought 

 — for in the largest telescopes they show 

 a great mass of intricate and permanent 

 detail. Many astronomers believe that 

 they are — at least in part — regions of 

 some sort of vegetation, but this is as vet 



