Jnr,Y, 1902 



KNOWLEDGE. 



153 



instructive for the " astronomer without a telescope." On 

 Foliruary 1st, 1802, an anonymous post-card was received 

 by l)r. Copelau<l at the Ruyal Observatory', Edinburgh, 

 with tlie foUowinL,' aniiauncinient : — 



'• Nnva in Auriica. In Milky Way, about two degrees 

 south of % Aurif^a?, preceding 26 Aurigai. Fifth magni- 

 tude, slightly brighter than % ." 



That night the star was examined by means of an eye- 

 jiiecc prism at the Edinburgh Observatory, and its 

 spectrum was seen to contain many vivid bright lines, 

 which at once marked it as a " new star " of spectroscopic 



Northern Honiisplieiv. 



the moans at my disposal on the morning of the 31st ult., when I 

 made sure that a strange body was present in the sky, were Klein's 

 ' Star Athia ' and a final! pofket telescope which magnifies ten 

 tim s." 



An examination which Prof. Pickering had made of 

 photographs whidi had been taken at the Harvard College 

 Observatory of the region of the Nova, showed " that the 

 star was fainter than the 11th magnitude on November 

 2ud, 1891, than the (Jth magnitude on December 1st, and 

 that it was increasing rapidly on December 10th." It 

 would seem to have attained a maximum about December 



Southern Hemisphere. 



DisTBiDCTioN OK Nkw .Si'AES bklativk tu the Milky Wat. 

 (The Xov;v discovered by Mrs. Fleming on the Harvard Photographic Plates are distinguished by the letter /"above the date.) 



interest, not inferior to the one which had made so great 

 .1 sensation in 18tifj. And the anticipations which that 

 first glance gave w^ere much more than fulfilled. Indeed, 

 Nova Aurigie opened an entirely new chapter in the 

 spei-troscojnc study of stars of its class ; but such study is 

 a|)art from our present purpose, which cannot l>e better 

 tultilled than by quoting the account given by the 

 discoverer, the Kev. Thomas D. Anderson, in a letter which 

 appeared in Nature, February 18th, 1892. 



" Prof. Copeliind has suggested to uie that as I am the writer of 

 the anonymous post-card mentioned by you a fortnight ago (p. 325), 

 I sliould tell your readers what I know about the Nova. 



" It was visible as a star of the tifth magnitude certainly for two 

 or three days, very probably even for a week, before Prof. Cope- 

 land received my post-card. I am almost certain tlint at 2 o'clock 

 on the morning of .Sunday, the 24th uU . I saw a fifth magnitude 

 star making a very large obtuse angle with ^ Tauri and X -\urigie, 

 and I am positive that I saw it at least twice sub3e<iuently during 

 that night, t;nfortunately, on each occasion I mistook it for 

 26 Aurigic, merely remai'king to myself that 26 was a much 

 brighter star than I used to think it. It was only on the morning 

 of Sunday, the 31st ult., that I satisfied myself that it was a 

 strange body. On each occasion of my seeing it, it was brighter 

 than X. Uow long before the 24th ult. it was visible to the naked 

 eye I cannot tell, as it was many months since I liad looked 

 minutely at that region of the heavens. 



"You might also allow me to state, for the benefit of jour 

 readers, that my ease is one that can afford encouragement to even 

 the humblest of amateurs. My knowledge of the technicalities of 

 astronomy, unfortunately, is of tlie most meagre description ; all 



20th, when its magnitude was 4'4. It then decreased 

 slightly for about a month, fading to somewhat below the 

 .5th magnitude. When Dr. Anderson detected it, it was 

 again on the upgrade, and it seems to have reached its 

 maximum about February 3rd, after wliich it declined. 

 The star therefore had been visible to the naked eye for 

 fully six weeks before Dr. Anderson's discovery, a time 

 when it was evidently passing through the most interesting 

 and important changes. But for his zeal in studying the 

 heavens, it would without doubt have escaped notice 

 altogether, and the spectroscopic revelations which it 

 yielded would have been wholly lost. 



This success naturally stirred Dr. Anderson up to niaking 

 the search for " new stars " his serious business, as he 

 narrates in a most interesting letter addressed to the 

 Observatory for March, 1902. He writes : — 



" I need hardly say that before the advent of Nova Auriga) my 

 astronomisings were fruitless— fruitless, that is to say, so far as the 

 rest of humanity was concerned— but far from being fruitless as 

 regarded myself, for there was for me, at least, a certain joyfid 

 calm when, after a long evening spent in writing sermons or in 

 other work, I threw up the window, and taking out my little pocket 

 telescope, surveyed the never palling gloi-y of the midnight sky. 

 But after tlie appearance of Nova .Vurigaj the thought occurred to 

 me that perliaps after all ' new stars ' might not be such rare 

 phenomena as had up to that time been supposed. The correctiiess 

 of that surmise has been proved by Mrs. Fleming's discovery since 

 then of no fewer than five of these objects on the- Harvard College 



