Jdly, 1901.] 



KNOWLEDGE. 



153 



home, sink lower and lower iu the north and disappear, 

 whilst new lights rise to shine upon ns from the sonth. 

 Bnt beside the disappearance of old friends and the 

 coming into sight of stranger stars, the known stars 

 that still remain to us adopt most unfamiliar atti- 

 tudes, and these become more and more perplexing 

 the further south we go. Lordly Orion stands on his 

 head in the exact attitude of a little city Arab, turning 

 ft cai-t-wheel ; the long procession of the zodiac, all in 

 turn suffer the same inversion ; Pegasus alone, a topsy- 

 turvy constellation with us, pursues his course across 

 the sky with head upraised. Even the moon seems 



one of which, Canopus, is inferior only to Sirius. As 

 the Milky Way sweeps through Argo, it enters Canis 

 Major, which, though not. a large constellation, con- 

 tains Sirius and three stars above tho second 

 magnitude and throe more above the third. This belt 

 of tiie sky, therefore, from Scorpio to Sirius, is by far 

 the most brilliant in the entire hoavons, both from 

 tho numbers of brilliant stars clustered within a narrow 

 band and from the brightness of tho Milky Way. But 

 beyond this belt wo find an altogether difTcrent state 

 of things. Round the southern ])ole there are no 

 star groups to rival tho Groat Bear, Cassiopeia, the 



XV 



XIV 



XIII 



XII 



I' • 



LUPUS 





XI 



IX 







CEN TAURUS. 



,&•.■.:. ^\ . 



%#r 



?- A 



,„,; •^ ^ 



-WORMA ,;. >-■ 



CIRCINUS 



^CRUk ' / •- 



VELA 



PUPPIS 



*fi J. 



MUSCA 



-fl 



CARINA 

 •u 



:^> ri 



•V 



R P 



'? 



fV ■'■" ' "t' .: •. i™AN&ULUM.' ^C.CkAMn ^'"'' \ ''^'"^° *' 



xX^^/V-J-..^ (•'■■ •nVjAPUS_y \ V, .;fl ~ - V ', \PICTOR ^r'""""^. • 



^Z. '^i iiMnji(iiii(ii(iiiiiiiiiiiiiiMMiiiiniiill<^iiiiOiitiiiiiiiiliiiiiiiii'iiTTTlii'i(^Miiiiiiiiniiiij((iiiiiiii.tii>iiriPHFiiiii^riiiiiH Jj.iiiiMjitiii>ni>ii"ii"ii"ii'i.i.Hiitiy(ifIlil'Miiiii iiiil^iiuiix M r ii nil I ii ii r>ifiii<in-jj iiiiiriiiiiiii'iri 



llllttllllllVlllMOilllllli 



Solsr.tnJ ColuTC \ ' 



TELESCOPIUM 



« '. OCTANS I 

 •i I 



MENSA 



f^ 



% 



,.i„,, 

 DORADO 



1 •« 



''U. \ 



^ \ 



SAGITTARIUS 



'M 



) 



PAVO I "^ 



' '^Oy 



»« 



. INDUS 



'/ 



•/I -•• 



9 E 

 I "S E 



l*P HYDRUS ' V. 



S 



7 COELUM 



»v 'a 



•*, TOUCAN 



J-i •? 



ti 



niCROSCOPIUM / 



&RUS 



•1 



i PHOENIX 



PAtilf nva' 



HOROLOCIUM 

 •1 ,•■-'■■' 



•1'' :^' • 



ERIOANUS 



XXI 



XXIi XXIII XXIV I I 



Star Map No. 7 ; Tlie South Ciroumpolar Star.s. 



altered from the moon we knew in Britain ; the mourn- 

 ful face that watched us there is no longer recognisable 

 as such, since we see " his spotty globe '' inverted. 



The new regions of the sky opened to us from southern 

 latitudes not only differ in detail from those with which 

 we are familiar, they possess some general characteristics 

 that cannot fail to strike the observer. Starting from 

 Scorpio, here no longer creeping along the horizon as 

 in England, but riding in the very zenith, we find 

 the Milky Way sweeping downwards towards the south- 

 west in masses of the greatest brilliancy and complication. 

 Around its course are gathered the gieatest aggregation 

 of brilliant stars to be found anywhere in the sky. Tho 

 Scorpion is followed by the Wolf and the Centaur, and 

 these by the ship Argo. Between Argo and Centaunis 

 comes the little Southern Cross, a constellation which 

 has perhaps been extravagantly praised, but which yet 

 contains within a very small area thi'ee stars above the 

 second magnitude, and six others ranging between that 

 and the fifth. The Centaur claims ten stars brighter 

 than the third magnitude, the Wolf throo, Argo fifteen. 



Dragon, or even Cepheus and the Lesser Bear, which 

 surround the northern polo. The new constellations, 

 which were placed round the southern pole by Dircksz, 

 Keyser, and Lacaille, are for the most part entirely desti- 

 tute of bright stars, or of easily remembered configura- 

 tions ; those actually round the pole being especially 

 poor in this respect. Octans, the constellation in which 

 the southern pole is situated, though of considerable 

 extent, contains but a single star as bright as the fourth 

 magnitude, nearly all its members being fainter than 

 magnitude 5i. The southern pole star, Sigma Octantis, 

 is catalogued as of magnitude 5.8. 



The other chief features special to the southern 

 heavens, are the presence of the two Magellanic Clouds, 

 to which tiiere is nothing to correspond in the northern 

 sky. Then close to the Southern Cross, we find the 

 Coal Sack, a great hole in tho Milky Way, blacker and 

 much more defined than any coiresponding gap in its 

 northern course. There is indeed a " coal sack " in the 

 constellation of the Swan, but the portion of the Galaxy 

 surrounding it is far from being so bright and distinct 



