NEW STARS. 207 



its brightness (a fact which subsequently gave rise to many 

 erroneous conclusions as to the velocity of coloured rays in 

 their passage through space). At its first appearance, as long 

 as it had the brilliancy of Venus and Jupiter, it was for two 

 months white, and then it passed through yellow into red. In 

 the spring of 1573, Tycho Brahe compared it to Mars ; after- 

 wards he thought that it nearly resembled Betelgeuze, the star in 

 the right shoulder of Orion. Its colour for the most part was like 

 the red tint of Aldebaran. In the spring of 1 5 73, and especially 

 in May, its white colour returned (albedinem quandam sublivi- 

 dam induebat, qualis Saturni stellse subesse videtur). So it re- 

 mained in January, 1574; being, up to the time of its entire 

 disappearance in the month of March, 1574, of the fifth 

 magnitude, and white, but of a duller whiteness, and exhibiting 

 a remarkably strong scintillation in proportion to its faint- 

 ness. 



The circumstantial minuteness of these statements 1 is of 

 itself a proof of the interest which this natural phenomenon 

 could not fail to awaken, by calling forth many important 

 questions, in an epoch so brilliant in the history of astro- 

 nomy. For (notwithstanding the general rarity of the 

 appearance of new stars) similar phenomena, accidentally 

 crowded together within the short space of thirty-two 

 years, were thrice repeated within the observation of Euro- 

 pean astronomers, and consequently served to heighten the 

 excitement. The importance of star-catalogues, for ascer- 



1 De admiranda Nova Stella, anno 1572, exorta in Tycho- 

 nis Brake, Astronomic instauratce Progymnasmata, 1603, 

 pp. 298-304, and 578. In the text I have closely followed 

 the account which Tycho Brahe himself gives. The very 

 doubtful statement (which is, however, repeated in several 

 astronomical treatises) that his attention was first called 

 to the phenomenon of the new star by a concourse of country 

 people, need not therefore be here noticed. 



