tar 

 stars 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



646 



I made it a practise not to leave my chem- 

 ical laboratory until the evening. Raising 

 my eyes, as usual, during one of my walks, 

 to the well-known vault of heaven, I ob- 

 served, with indescribable astonishment, 

 near the zenith, in Cassiopeia, a radiant 

 fixed star, of a magnitude never before seen. 

 In my amazement, I doubted the evidence 

 of my senses. However, to convince myself 

 that it was no illusion, and to have the 

 testimony of others, I summoned my assist- 

 ants from the laboratory and inquired of 

 them, and of all the country people that 

 passed by, if they also observed the star 

 that had thus suddenly burst forth. I sub- 

 sequently heard that in Germany wagoners 

 and other common people first called the 

 attention of astronomers to this great phe- 

 nomenon in the heavens a circumstance 

 which, as in the case of non-predicted com- 

 ets, furnished fresh occasion for the usual 

 raillery at the expense of the learned." 

 HUMHOLDT Cosmos, vol. iii,p. 151. (H., 1897.) 



3198. STAR-CLUSTERS Island Uni- 

 verses Plurality of Worlds. The contem- 

 plation of the heavens affords no spectacle 

 so grand and so eloquent as that of a clus- 

 ter of stars. Most of them lie at such a 

 distance that the most powerful telescopes 

 still show them to us like star-dust. " Their 

 distance from us is such that they are be- 

 yond, not only all our means of measure- 

 ment," says Newcomb, " but beyond all our 

 powers of estimation. Minute as they ap- 

 pear, there is nothing that we know of to 

 prevent our supposing each of them to be 

 the center of a group of planets as exten- 

 sive as our own, and each planet to be as 

 full of inhabitants as this one. We may 

 thus think of them as little colonies on the 

 outskirts of creation itself, and as we see 

 all the suns which give them light condensed 

 into one little speck, we might be led to 

 think of the inhabitants of the various sys- 

 tems as holding intercourse with each other. 

 Yet, were we transported to one of these 

 distant clusters, and stationed on a planet 

 circling one of the suns which compose it, 

 instead of finding the neighboring suns in 

 close proximity, we should see a firmament 

 of stars around us, such as we see from the 

 earth. Probably it would be a brighter 

 firmament, in which so many stars would 

 glow with more than the splendor of Sirius 

 as to make the night far brighter than 

 ours ; but the inhabitants of the neighboring 

 worlds would as completely elude telescopic 

 vision as the inhabitants of Mars do here. 

 Consequently, to the inhabitants of every 

 planet in the cluster, the question of the 

 plurality of worlds might be as insolvable 

 as it is to us." FLAMMARION Popular As- 

 tronomy, bk. vi, ch. 10, p. 660. (A.) 



3199. Minuteness of the 



Earth The Vision of the Universe. There 

 is still another very interesting tract of 

 speculation, which has been opened up to 

 us by the more recent observations of as- 



tronomy. What we allude to is the dis- 

 covery of the nebulae. W^e allow that it 

 is but a dim and indistinct light which 

 this discovery has thrown upon the struc- 

 ture of the universe; but still it has 

 spread before the eye of the mind a field of 

 very wide and lofty contemplation. Anteri- 

 or to this discovery, the universe might ap- 

 pear to have been composed of an indefinite 

 number of suns, about equidistant from 

 each other, uniformly scattered over space, 

 and each encompassed by such a planetary 

 attendance as takes place in our own sys- 

 tem. But we have now reason to think that 

 instead of lying uniformly, and in a state 

 of equidistance from each other, they are 

 arranged into distinct clusters; that, in the 

 same manner as the distance of the nearest 

 fixed stars so inconceivably superior to that 

 of our planets from each other marks the 

 separation of the solar systems, so the 

 distance of two contiguous clusters may be 

 so inconceivably superior to the reciprocal 

 distance of those fixed stars which belong 

 to the same cluster as to mark an equally 

 distinct separation of the clusters, and to 

 constitute each of them an individual mem- 

 ber of some higher and more extended ar- 

 rangement. This carries us upwards through 

 another ascending step in the scale of mag- 

 nificence, and there leaves us in the uncer- 

 tainty whether even here the wonderful 

 progression is ended; and, at all events, 

 fixes the assured conclusion in our minds 

 that, to an eye which could spread itself 

 over the whole, the mansion which accom- 

 modates our species might be so very small 

 as to lie wrapped in microscopical conceal- 

 ment; and in reference to the only Being 

 who possesses this universal eye, well might 

 we say, " What is man, that thou art mind- 

 ful of him; or the son of man, that thou 

 shouldst deign to visit him?" CHALMERS 

 Astronomical Discourses, p. 35. (R. Ct., 

 1848.) 



32OO. STAR-COLORS DUE TO STEL- 

 LAR ATMOSPHERES Celestial Signal- 

 lamps. Hence we learn that the two stars 

 [composing the double star Albireo or p Cyg- 

 ni] owe their color to the nature of their 

 vaporous envelopes. Each star glows in re- 

 ality with a white light ; but the white light 

 has in one case to pass through vapors of a 

 somewhat ruddy hue (because absorbing blue 

 light), and therefore this star looks ruddy, 

 while the light of the other star shines 

 through bluish vapors, and therefore this 

 star looks blue. We do not yet know how 

 it chances that the vaporous envelopes of 

 these stars, and of other pairs of stars, differ 

 in this way. Perhaps we shall never know. 

 It is, however, an important gain to our 

 knowledge to have ascertained that the col- 

 ors of the double stars are not inherent, but 

 that these stars are, as it were, celestial 

 signal-lamps, shining through colored mat- 

 ter. PROCTOR Expanse of Heaven, p. 225. 

 (L. G. & Co., 1897.) 



