120 PLEASANT WA YS IN SCIENCE. 



themselves being, I believe, due in the main to meteoric 

 downfalls. There is greater reason for believing that the 

 great sun-spot which appeared in June, 1843, was caused by 

 the comet which three months before had grazed the sun's 

 surface. As Professor Kirkwood, of Bloomington, Indiana, 

 justly remarks, had this comet approached a little nearer, the 

 resistance of the solar atmosphere would probably have 

 brought the comef s entire mass to the solar surface. Even 

 at its actual distance, it must have produced considerable 

 atmospheric disturbance. But the recent discovery that a 

 number of comets are associated with meteoric matter travel- 

 ling in nearly the same orbits, suggests the inquiry whether 

 an enormous meteorite following in the comef s train, and 

 having a somewhat less perihelion distance, may not have been 

 precipitated upon the sun, thus producing the great disturb- 

 ance observed so shortly after the comet's perihelion passage. 



Let us consider now the evidence obtained from the star 

 in Cygnus, noting especially in what points it resembles, and 

 in what points it differs from, the evidence afforded by the 

 star in the Crown. 



The new star was first seen by Professor Schmidt at a 

 quarter to six on the evening of November 24. It was then 

 shining as a star of the third magnitude, in the constellation 

 of the Swan, not very far from the famous but faint star 61 

 Cygni which first of all the stars in the northern heavens 

 had its distance determined by astronomers. The three 

 previous nights had unfortunately been dark; but Schmidt 

 is certain that on November 20 the star was not visible. At 

 midnight, November 24, its light was very yellow, and it was 

 somewhat brighter than the well-known star Eta Pegasi, 

 which marks the forearm of the Flying Horse. Schmidt 

 sent news of the discovery to Leverrier, at Paris ; but neither 

 he nor Leverrier telegraphed the news, as they should have 

 done, to Greenwich, Berlin, or the United States. Many 

 precious opportunities for observing the spectrum of the 

 new-comer at the time of its greatest brilliancy were thus 

 lost 



