96 Star anfr Meatber Gossip 



seen in full daylight with the unaided eye, but if we 

 made the hypothesis that she was visible when, say, 

 only half as bright as when brightest, she would still 

 be six to seven times as bright as Sinus. 



When one considers the whole of the evidence avail- 

 able one must be struck, as Humboldt was, with the 

 " highly credible testimony of a celebrated optician " 

 who, in his youth, " saw stars by daylight through the 

 shaft of a chimney." 



PLANET NOTES 



During the winter of 1914-5 Saturn was a very 

 conspicuous object in the night-skies, especially when, 

 in the early part of the season, it shone at the north- 

 west angle of Gemini, a position in which Jupiter 

 attracted so much attention at the opening of the year 

 1907. Writing to me at Christmas on this remarkable 

 brightness of Saturn, Mr. C. Grover, of Rousdon 

 Observatory, Lyme Regis, said : 



Having high north decimation, and with the 

 ring almost at its widest opening, Saturn at once 

 arrests attention even to the naked eye. And 

 although the ring is, of course, quite invisible 

 without a telescope, the superior brightness of the 

 planet, when this appendage is presented at its 

 broadest dimensions, is quite apparent to the 

 ordinary observer. I have watched the planet at 

 the disappearance of the ring in 1862, 1877, 1891, 

 and 1907, and to the naked eye the planet about 

 these dates was much less bright than now. It 

 looked like a very dull first magnitude star, and 



