,MAl.'\riMJI*i;.< <H- SIAHrf. Di 



640 stars of the sixth mai^iiltudo. The nebulous stars (vf- 

 (t}fXot:iihi(;) of Ptolemy and of the Pseudo-Eratosthcniau Ca- 

 tas/crisuis are mostly small stellar swarms,* appeariuf^ like 

 nebuke in the clearer atmosphere of the southern hemisphere. 

 1 more particularly base this conjecture on the mention of a 

 nebula in the right hand of Perseus. Galileo, who, like the 

 Greek and Arabian astronomers, was unacquainted with the 

 nebula in Andromeda which is visible to the naked eye, says 

 in his Niaiciiis sidereus that stellce nebulosce are nothing 

 more than stellar masses scattered in shining groups through 

 the ether {iircolce sparsim per ccthera fulgent).-\ The ex- 

 pression {jCyv fiEydXijjv rd^ig), the order of magnitudes, al- 

 though referring only to luster, led, as early as the ninth cen- 

 tury, to hypotheses on the diameters of stars of different bright- 

 ness \X as if the intensit)'^ of light did not depend on the dis- 

 tance, volume, and mass, as also on the peculiar character 

 of the surface of a cosmical body in more or less favoring the 

 process of light. 



At the period of the Mongolian supremacy, when, in the 

 fifteenth century, astronomy flourished at Samarcand, under 

 Timur Ulugh Beg, photometric determinations were facili- 

 tated by the subdivision of each of the six classes of Hippar- 

 chus and Ptolemy into three subordinate groups ; distinctions, 

 for example, being drawn between the small, intermediate, 

 and large stars of the second magnitude — an attempt which 

 reminds us of the decimal gradations of Struve and Argelan- 

 der.s^ This advance in photometry, by a more exact determ- 

 ination of degrees of intensity, is ascribed in Ulugh Beg's 

 tables to Abdurrahman Sufi, who wrote a work " on the 

 knowledge of the fixed stars," and was the first who men- 

 tions one of the Magellanic clouds under the name of the 

 White Ox. Since the discovery and gradual improvement 

 of telescopic vision, these estimates of the gradations of light 

 have been extended far below the sixth class. The desire 

 of comparing the increase and decrease of light in the newly- 



* Ptol. Almag., ed Halina, torn, ii., p. 40, and in Eratosth. Catast., 

 cap. 22, p. 18: r/ 6i K£(pa?^rj teal ij upnrj avanror opdrat, diu ds vE(l>e?M6ovg 

 GvoTi)0(j)f/c 6oKEi Tiatv opaaOai. Thus, too, Geniinus, Phcen. (ed. Hllder. 

 1590), p. 46. t Cosmos, vol. ii., p. 330, 331. 



X Muhamedis Alfragani Chronologica et Ast. Elementa, 1590, cap. 

 xxiv., p. 118. 



$ Some MSS. of the Almagest i-efer to such subdivisions or interme- 

 diate clas3e.s, as they add the words /xit^uv or sTiuaauv to the deteim- 

 ination of magnitudes. (Cod. Pans, No. 2389.) Tycho expressed this 

 mcrease or dimiimtion l>y points. 



