380 



THE STELLAR UNIVERSE. 



Fig. 2. 



and almost starless patches, especially in Scorpio, near * Centauri and the 

 cross ; while to the north it fades away pale and dim, and is in comparison 

 hardly traceable. I think it is impossible to view this splendid zone, with the 

 astonishingly rich and evenly-distributed fringe of stars of the third and fourth 

 magnitudes, which form a broad skirt to its southern border, like a vast cur- 

 tain without an impression, amounting to a conviction, that the Milky Way 

 is not a mere stratum, but an annulus ; or, at least, that our system is placed 

 within one of the poorer and almost vacant parts of its general mass, and that 

 eccentrically, so as to be much nearer to the parts about the cross, than to 

 that diametrically opposed to it." 



When a telescope is directed to the heavens, the actual space it renders 

 visible at one time, technically called a. field of view, is small in the same pro- 

 portion as the magnifying power of the instrument is great. Thus a telescope 

 of a certain magnifying power will present to the observer the complete disk 



