ASTRONOMY. 'M'>1 



mate oCbiigbtiiess may be more trustworthy, and that our new star may 

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

 ])arently to vary in brightness." - - - 



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

 Ireland, discovered on December 13 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. Copelaud and Becker observed 

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

 of an orange-red color. They remarlc : "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 examijied the 

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

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

 derwent such great outbursts of brilliancy in the constellations Corona 

 and Cy gnus in 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 icith spectra of the third type. — "Professor Duu6r has published 

 an important catalogue of stars having banded spectra. Following 

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

 bands fading away towards the violet ns 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. Dun^r's type III o, 

 therefore, corresponds to ISe(;chi's third type, and his III h to Seech i's 

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

 supply the means for future observers to detect changes in 1 liese sjx'ctra, 

 should any such occur, for, as he points out, these stars arc probably in 

 a very advanced state of development, and we may therefore, perliaps, 

 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 ])eriod 

 usually belong to this class. 



"With this view Professor Buner has carefully examined all the known 

 objects of this type which are visible in his latitude, and for which the 

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

 297 stars of type III a — that is, withbandsshading oft" towardsthered — 

 and 55 of type III h, witli bands shading oft* in the opposite direction. 

 An important section follows, giving a list of stars wliich different as 

 tronomers" have regarded as belonging to tiie third class, l>ut which 

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

 there any good reason to suspect a change in the si)ectrum. lu the 

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



