188 ASTRONOMY. 



ZEAU. During a stay in Jamaica the author resolved to form a new 

 Uranoaietry, which should i^ossess the advantage above all others hith- 

 erto jjublished, that it was to be the work of a single individual, observ- 

 ing all the stars in both hemispheres visible to the naked eye within a 

 short space of time. He accordingly commenced working on January 

 28, 1875, and the work was finished on February 28, 187G. He had lirst 

 prepared maps, on which all the stars were plotted down without regard 

 to magnitude ; then every region was gone over two or three times, and 

 the magnitudes carefully estimated, the six usual classes being used, 

 but each class only divided into two halves. The atlas thus formed 

 consists of live plates, on which the stars, their letters, the names and 

 limits of the constellations (but not their figures), and the milky way 

 are depicted. The latter has Tjeen attended to with great care, the 

 deeper or paler hue of the light-green color representing greater or lesser 

 brightness. The catalogue of stars for 1880 contains 5,719 stars. M. 

 HouzEAU has examined the distribution of the stars in four ways : 1, 

 with respect to the solar equator ; 2, with respect to the direction of the 

 sun's proper motion ; 3, perpendicular to this direction ; 4, with respect 

 to the milky way. i^o law whatever was found in the first three ways, 

 while the fourth mode of proceeding confirmed W. Steuve's conclusion 

 that the density of stellar layers parallel to the plane of the milky way 

 decreases very regularly and gradually towards the poles of the latter. 



Julius Schmidt has, in (iontinuation of his researches on the colors of 

 stars, published an extensive series of color estimations, made chiefly • 

 with the finder of the Athens refractor, from 1872-'78. Only for Arc- 

 tnrus has he been able, with any certainty, to find a variation of color. 

 It is mostly very bright stars he has observed, and he investigates the 

 difference in the estimation, according to whether the finder or the re- 

 fractor was used, and finds a greater difterence the nearer the color is to 

 white. 



A " new star" of 8.8 mag. was found in jSTovember by Mr. Baxen- 

 DELL, according to two Dun Eecht observations in 7^^ 34™ 45^07 + 8"^ 39' 

 39".0 (1879.0). According to Vogel, the spectrum is very remarkable, 

 with many dark bauds, especiallj' in the more refrangible part. 



PARALLAX OF STARS. 



Kearly the whole of Part III of the " Astronomical Observations and 

 Eesearches made at Dunsink" is devoted to annual parallax. The first 

 IDaper contains a discussion of observations of the planetary nebula H. 

 IV. 37 from August, 1871, to August, 1872, by Dr. Brtjnnow. The 

 nebula has in the center a well-defined point resembling a star of the 

 eleventh magnitude. This was compared in declination with a star 

 of the tenth magnitude, and the i)arallax was found to be perfectly in- 

 sensible, a result which agrees well with that of a similar series of ob- 

 servations by Professor Bredichin, of Moscow. 



A notice of an elaborate x>aper by Dr. Elkix on the parallax of Alpha 



