February 1, 1898.] 



KNOWLEDGE. 



39 



exposures made with the kinematograph for corona were 

 successful, but no shadow was observed. The spectrum 

 of the chromosphere and prominences was successfully 

 observed with an opera-glass fitted with a direct vision 

 prism in one of the eyepieces, and the spectrum of the 

 "flash" was photographed with a prismatic camera and 

 with a six-iuch telescope. Indeed, all instruments, with 

 the exception of the integrating spactroacope, appear to 

 have responded fully to the most sanguine hopes of their 

 respective manipulators, and we have had what may be 

 called a record eclipse. 



Native astrologers had prophesied all kinds of calamities, 

 including a tidal wave at Bombay and the downfall of the 

 British raj. Immense crowds bathed in the waters of the 

 Ganges at Benares, Calcutta, and other centres during the 

 eclipse ; the bathers at Back Bay tied Durab grass to their 

 clothes, and put some of it into pickles and preserves, to 

 ensure that they should not be affected by the eclipse. 

 Religious Hindus sat down and counted their beads at the 

 moment of contact, at the same time reciting mantras 

 or prayers, and hymns, and there was general fasting. It 

 is the impression of some of the Ilmdus that when there 

 was no British raj in India the solar eclipses occurred 

 once in twelve years, and that they are now more frequent 

 on account of the increase of sins and misdeeds. Here 

 and there on the foreshore stood Parsees, zend or avasta 

 in hand, and with their faces turned towards the sun ; 

 priests, ever ready to receive alms, ceased their solicita- 

 tions during the eclipse. Beggars, however, swarmed 

 nearly everywhere, crying for alms for the recovery of the 

 sun from the jaws of the dragon Riihn. 



Mr. E. Walter ^launder, whose well-equipped party was 

 favoured with excellent conditions for observing and 

 photographing, will contribute a detailed account of the 

 eclipse to the April Number of Knowledge. 



PHOTOGRAPH OF THE SPIRAL NEBULA 

 MESSIER 33 TRIANGULI. 



By Is.\Ao Egberts, d.sc, k.r.s. 



THE annexed photograph of the nebula was taken 

 with the twenty-inch reflector on November 14th, 

 1895, with an exposure of the plate during 

 2h. 15m., between sidereal time Ih. 18m. and 

 3h. 83m. A previous photograph of the object 

 was taken with an exposure of three hours, on 27th 

 November, 1891. 



Scale of the photograph, one millimetre to twenty-four 

 seconds of arc. 



Co-ordinates of the flducial stars marked with dots, for 

 the epoch 1900. 



Star(.)D.M. No. 256 Zone 29' K.A. Ih. 26m. 8-8s. Dec. N. 30° 6-5' Mag. 



„ (..) „ 260 „ „ Ih. 2Sm. I'Ss. „ 29=53-6' „ 80 



„ (•.•) „ 263 „ „ Ih. 29m. 38-5S. „ 30° 9-3' „ 9-2 



„ (::) „ 216 „ 30» „ Ih. -iSm. 49--4S. „ 30° 47-6' „ 8-4 



The nebula is referred to in the N.G.C. No. 598, G.C. 

 352, h 131, and is figured in the PJiilosophkal Transactions, 

 1850, Plate XXXVI., Fig. 5, and in 1861, Plate XXXVI., 

 Fig. 10, and in the " Observations of NebulfB and Clusters 

 of Stars," p. 20, where Lord Eosse describes its spiral 

 character, which he was the first to detect. 



This nebula is one of the many that cannot be ade- 

 quately described by words, or delineated by eye and hand- 

 work, because of its very complicated, tortuous, and ill- 

 defined structure as seen with a telescope ; but the annexed 

 photograph, and, better still, the original negative, enable 

 us to see the remarkable contortions, and the nebulous 

 and star-like condensations, of which the nebula is 



formed. We can also see the relationship of its parts and 

 their connection in the formation of the object as a whole, 

 so that much of the mystery concerning it, previously to 

 the revelation by the photograph, is removed. 



It will be seen that there are two large, very prominent, 

 spiral arms, with their respective external curvatures 

 facing north and south, and that the curves are approxi- 

 mately symmetrical from their extremities to their point 

 of junction at the centre of revolution, where there is a 

 nebulous star of about tenth magnitude, with dense 

 nebulosity, elongated in north and south directions sur- 

 rounding it. Involved in this nebulosity are three bright 

 and several faint nebulous stars ; the two arms are 

 crowded with well-defined and with faint nebulous stars, 

 having nebulosity between them ; and it is to the combined 

 effect of these that the defined forms of the arms are due. 



Besides these two arms there are subsidiary arms, less 

 well defined, which are constituted of interrupted streams 

 of faint stars and of nebulosity intermingled together. 

 Many of these stars are nebulous, and many are well 

 defined at their margins, but small. The interspaces 

 between the convolutions of the spiral are more or less 

 filled with faint nebulosity, having curves, rifts, fields, 

 and lanes, without apparent nebulosity in them. They 

 are like the interspaces in clouds of smoke, and cannot be 

 classified. 



There are outliers of nebulosity with many small well- 

 defined stars as well as nebulous stars involved in them, 

 and there are also isolated nebulous stars on the extreme 

 boundaries of the nebula ; the evidence is strong that they 

 are all related to the nebula. 



These descriptions, and more, can be verified by 

 examination of the photograph and the negatives ; and 

 they arouse iu us the desire to know the kind of cataclysm 

 — for such it appears to have been — that produced the 

 general smash and redistribution of the pre-existing 

 matter. Was it the collision of two suns (with or without 

 attendant satellites) in space, moving from opposite 

 directions, with the high velocities known to exist, and 

 smashing each other so that the material of which they 

 were composed was scattered in a thin discoid form of a 

 mixture of meteorites, meteoric dust, and nebulosity ? 

 Was it a collision between two swarms of meteorites, or of 

 two clouds of nebulous matter, or of one of each kind ? — 

 for we know with certainty that both forms of matter 

 (meteoric and nebulous) are common in space, and that 

 they extend over areas of sufficient magnitude to include 

 this nebula — or is there another more probable cause ? 



We may with considerable confidence draw inferences 

 as to the future development of the nebula, for it is 

 evidently aggregating into stars ; and those aggregations 

 are assuming the various lines and curves that we can 

 trace in the finished stars which are strewn over the sky. 



This nebula is not an isolated example of its class which 

 has been revealed by the aid of photography. There are, 

 for instance, the great nebula in Andromeda, Messier 101 

 UrsK Majoris, and 74 Pischim resembling it, though the 

 two last named are further advanced in symmetrical 

 development than M 83 ; but it is not a tax on the 

 imagination, when the respective photographs are com- 

 pared with each other, to satisfy our sense of sight that 

 the construction of these four nebuL? has resulted from 

 similar causes, and that their developments into curves 

 and lines of stars are proceeding on identically similar 

 principles. 



We have as yet no guide to enable us to form an opinion 

 concerning the rate of their progressive development, for 

 the intervals of from four to eight years that have elapsed 

 since the first and second duplicates of the photographs of 



