240 SPECIAL RESULTS IN THE URANOLOGICAL 



rius and Cygnus), are remarkable for their extraordinary 

 size; others, (as Nos. 27 and 51 of Messier's Catalogue), 

 for the peculiarity of their forms. 



In regard to the great nebula in the sword of Orion, we 

 have already noticed the circumstance of its never having 

 been mentioned by Galileo, although he had been so much 

 occupied with the stars between the belt and sword ( 418 ), 

 and had even constructed a map of that region. What he 

 terms Nebulosa Orionis, and which is drawn by him together 

 with Nebulosa Prsesepe, is expressly stated by him to be 

 an assemblage of small stars (stellarum constipatarum) in 

 theh?ad of Orion. In the drawing in 20 of the Sidereus 

 Nuucius, which extends from the belt to a Orionis in the 

 right leg, I recognise, above the star t, the multiple star 0. 

 The magnifying powers employed by Galileo were only from 

 eight to thirty. As the nebula in the sword does riot stand 

 by itself, but forms, when viewed through imperfect tele- 

 scopes, or in an unfavourable state of the atmosphere, a sort 

 of halo round the star 0, it may be that from this circum- 

 stance its individual existence and form escaped the notice 

 of the great Florentine observer, who, moreover, was otherwise 

 disinclined to admit or assume the existence of nebulae ( 419 ). 

 It was fourteen years after Galileo's death, in the year 1656, 

 that Huygens discovered the great nebula in Orion, and 

 gave a rough drawing of it, which was published in 1659 in 

 the " Systema Saturniuin." His own words are : " Whilst 

 I was engaged in observing, with a refractor of 2 3 -feet focal 

 length, Jupiter's variable belts, a dark central zone in Mars, 

 and some faint appearances in that planet, there was pre- 

 sented to me among the fixed stars a phenomenon which, so 

 far as I am aware, has never been observed before, and can 



