ASTRONOMY. 367 



mate of brigbtiiess may be more trustwortby, and that our new star may 

 be an old variable which has appeared before, causing tlie nebula ap- 

 parently to vary in brightness." - - - 



The new star near x' Orionis. — Mr. J. E. Gore, of Beltra, Ballysadare, 

 Ireland, discovered on December L3 a reddish star of about the Gth 

 magnitude, following x' (54) Orionis by about a minute and a half of 

 time, nearly in the same parallel. Drs. Oopeland and Becker observed 

 it at Dun Echt on the IGth, and found it to be of the 6 J magnitude and 

 of an orange-red color. They remark : " It has a very beautiful banded 

 spectrum of the third type, seven dark bands being readily distin- 

 guished with the prism; the bright intervals seem full of bright lines, 

 especially in the green and blue." M. C. Wolf has also examined the 

 spectrum of this remarkable star at the Paris Observatory ; he finds it 

 to be of a totally different character from those of the stars which un- 

 derwent such great outbursts of brilliancy in the constellations Corona 

 and Cygnusin the years 1866 and 1876, respectively, and presenting, in 

 fact, a great similarity to the spectrum of that extraordinarily variable 

 star known as Mira or o Ceti. 



SPECTRA OF STARS. 



Stars with spectra of the third type. — "Professor Duner has published 

 an important catalogue of stars having banded spectra. Following 

 Professor Vogel's classification, he prefers to regard the spectra with 

 bands fading away towards the violet as a subdivision of the same type 

 as those in which the bands fade away towards the red, rather than, 

 with Secchi, to make them into a separate class. Dun6r's type III a, 

 therefore, corresponds to Secchi's third type, and his III b to Secchi's 

 fourth type. Professor Duner's purpose in forming this catalogue is to 

 supply the means for future observers to detect changes in these spectra, 

 should any such occur, for, as he i)ointsout, these stars are probably in 

 a very advanced state of develoi)ment, and we may therefore, perhaps, 

 hope to discover some day changes in their spectra, which, carefully 

 studied, may lead to important results as to the nature of 'Suns. They 

 are the more interesting, also, because variable stars of long period 

 usually belong to this class. 



"With this view Professor Duner bas carefully examined all the known 

 objects of this tyx^e which are visible in his latitude, and for which the 

 optical means at his command were sutficient, and he has catalogued 

 297 stars of type III a — that is, with bands shading off towards the red — 

 and 55 of type III b, with bands shading off in the opposite direction. 

 An important section follows, giving a list of stars v.iiidi different as 

 tronomers have regarded as belonging to the tliird class, but which 

 Dun6r cannot so classify. Only in a very few instances, however, is 

 there any good reason to suspect a change in the spectrum. In the 

 great majority Secchi, whose observations supply most of these cases of 



