200 GETTING ACQUAINTED WITH THE STARS 



STORY TEST 



SYBIL HAS A UNIQUE WAY OF EXPLAINING WHY THE STARS 

 APPEAR TO MOVE 



Read car ef ally and critically. List all the errors and suggest corrections. 



I play that I am the earth and my eye is a person on the earth. 

 I stand near one end of the room. I name different objects in the 

 room " stars." Directly over my head is the North Star. Un- 

 fortunately my eye does not extend out from the surface of my face 

 as people stand out above the surface of the earth, and so my eye 

 cannot see the North Star. I play it is sunset in September. I 

 rotate slowly. When halfway around it is sunrise and the night is 

 over. The objects representing stars passed before my sight just 

 as if they had been moving and I had been still. I then move 

 to the opposite end of the room. It is now sunrise in March. 

 I rotate halfway to represent the night. I see some of the stars 

 (objects) that I saw before and some different ones. But the 

 positions in which I see them appear quite different. After this 

 experiment it is quite easy to understand how the two movements 

 of the earth can produce the common illusions of the movements 

 of the stars. 



PROBLEM III. HOW TO GET ACQUAINTED 

 WITH THE CONSTELLATIONS 



If you live in the northern hemisphere and look towards 

 the north on any clear night, you will find the Big Dipper. 

 The two stars on the side of the dipper away from the 

 handle are called "the pointers. 7 ' If you use these for 

 direction and follow this line from the bottom of the dipper 

 into space, you will presently come to a star not quite so 

 bright as those forming the bowl of the dipper. This is 

 Polaris, the polar or North Star. It is the star that has 

 guided travelers since ancient times. When we see it, we 

 should remember that the light which enters our eyes is 

 believed to have left that star more than 450 years ago. 

 The light by which you see the North Star left it before 

 Columbus, guided by that same star, discovered America. 

 That starlight has been traveling at the rate of 6,000,000,- 

 000,000 miles a year all these long years. Since the North 



