186 



SCENERY OF THE HEAVENS. 



changes among the regions of the fixed stars ; and perhaps, from a careful observation 

 of this lucid spot, something may be concluded concerning the nature of it." What this 

 immense looming mass portends, we know not, but the surmise is not improbable, that 

 here we have the germ of systems of worlds to be evolved in future ages, where Life, 

 Beauty, and Intelligence are destined to display their various phases. 



An object of the same class appears in the girdle of Andromeda, called " the transcend- 

 ently beautiful Queen of the nebulae," the oldest known nebula, supposed also to be 

 one of the nearest. It is visible to the naked eye in the absence of the moon, and 

 has often been mistaken for a comet. A notice of it occurs as early as the com- 

 mencement of the tenth century. The first telescopic view was obtained by Simon 

 Marius, Dec. 15. 1612, who compared it to a candle shining through a horn, that is, a 

 diluted light increasing in density towards a centre. This nebula is of an oval or 

 lenticular shape, and forms nearly a right-angled triangle with Almaach Mirach, the two 

 chief stars of Andromeda. A good eye may pick it up on a favourable night, by 

 projecting a line from Sheratan, the second star in Aries, through Mirach to about 4-1 

 beyond. It is about half a degree long, and from 15' to 20' broad. Herschel, who 

 deemed this one of the nearest nebulae in the heavens, remarks : " The brightest 

 part of it approaches to the resolvable nebulosity, and begins to show a faint red 

 colour ; which, from many observations on the magnitude and colour of nebulae, I 

 believe to be an indication that its distance in the coloured part does not exceed 

 2000 times the distance of Sirius." This is the rather extensive interval of 



38,000,000,000,000,000, of miles, a space which light 

 will require more than 6000 years to traverse, so that 

 a ray that now meets the eye must have started from 

 its source before the creation of man, and a ray that 

 is now leaving it will not accomplish the distance till 

 the world is six thousand years older. Another ex- 

 traordinary luminosity of the irresolvable class was 

 discovered by Massier, in 1764, a nebula, in the form 

 of a horseshoe, or the Greek letter 1, immediately 

 under Sobieski's shield. Herschel pronounced it " a 

 wonderful extensive nebulosity of the milky kind. 

 There are several stars visible in it, but they can have 

 no connection with that nebulosity, and are, doubtless, belonging to our own system, 

 scattered before it." 



The examples are numerous in which the nebulous substance shows decided symptoms 

 of central condensation, forming a kind of star surrounded with a faint atmosphere of 

 great extent. The objects of this class are called Stellar Nebulas. Structure is here 



Horse-shoe Nebula. 



Planetary Nebulae. 



clearly indicated, as though the matter had changed from a state of diffusion, and had 

 suddenly become aggregated at a point by the force of gravitation. It was an object 

 of this kind a perfect star with a halo around it, 1 14 Taurus that first dispelled from the 

 mind of Herschel the idea that all the nebulosities were crowds of remote stars, and sug- 



