THE STELLAR UNIVERSE. 



will then be the ordinary alternation of day and night as on the 

 earth, but the day will have more than the usual splendour, being 

 enlightened by two suns. 



In all intermediate seasons the two suns will rise and set at 

 different times. During a part of the day both will be seen at 

 once in the heavens, occupying different places, and reaching the 

 meridian at different times. There will be two noons. In the 

 morning for some time, more or less, according to the season of 

 the year, one sun only will be apparent, and in like manner, in 

 the evening, the sun which first rose will be the first to set, leaving 

 the dominion of the heavens to its splendid companion. 



The diurnal and annual phenomena incidental to the planets 

 attending the central sun s will not be materially different, except 

 that to them the two suns will have extremely different magni- 

 tudes, and will afford proportionally different degrees of light. 

 The lesser sun will appear much smaller, both on account of its 

 really inferior magnitude and its vastly greater distance. The 

 two days, therefore, when they occur, will be of very different 

 splendour, one being probably as much brighter than the other as 

 the light of noonday is to that of full moonlight, or to that of the 

 morning or evening twilight. 



But these singular vicissitudes of light will become still more 

 striking, when the two suns diffuse light of different colours. 

 Let us examine the very common case of the combination of a 

 crimson with a Hue sun. In general, they will rise at different 

 times. When the blue rises, it will for a time preside alone in 

 the heavens, diffusing a blue morning. Its crimson companion, 

 however, soon appearing, the lights of both being blended, a 

 white day will follow. As evening approaches, and the two orbs 

 descend toward the western horizon, the blue sun will first set, 

 leaving the crimson one alone in the heavens. Thus a ruddy 

 evening closes this curious succession of varying lights. As the 

 year rolls on, these changes will be varied in every conceivable 

 manner. At those seasons when the suns are on opposite sides of 

 a planet, crimson and blue days will alternate, without any inter- 

 vening night; and at the intermediate epochs all the various 

 intervals of rising and setting of the two suns will be exhibited. 



PROPER MOTION OF THE STARS. 



In common parlance the stars are said to be fixe d. They have 

 received this epithet to distinguish them from the planets, the sun, 

 and the moon, all of which constantly undergo changes of appa- 

 rent position on the surface of the heavens. The stars, on the 

 contrary, so far as the powers of the eye unaided by art can 

 discover, never change their relative position in the firmament, 

 6 



