4.66 Scientific Proceedings, Royal Dublin Society. 
so that we must be situated very nearly in the central plane. 
Two places of maximum breadth exist very nearly opposite each 
other, and two of minimum breadth are also about 180° apart. 
At one of these regions of greatest width two branches are 
plainly and easily recognizable, the rift beginning near a 
Centauri and extending to Cygnus in the north. The circles 
representing the course of these branches cross at the point of 
minimum breadth, seeming to show that the Milky Way is really 
made up of two galaxies. One of them being fainter and more 
diffused than the other, they would seem to be at unequal dis- 
tances from us. 
Julius Schmidt has, in continuation of his researches on the 
colours of stars, published an extensive series of colour-estimations, 
made chiefly with the finder of the Athens-refractor, from 
1872-78. Only for Arcturus has he been able, with any cer- 
tainty, to find a variation of colour. It is mostly very bright 
stars he has observed, and he investigates the difference in the 
estimation, according to whether the finder or the refractor was 
used, and finds a greater difference the nearer the colour is to 
white. 
A “new star” of 88 mag. was found in November by Mr. 
Baxendell, according to two Dunecht observations in 7°34" 45° 67 
+ 8° 39’ 39’°6 (1879°0). According to Vogel, the spectrum is 
very remarkable, with many dark bands, especially in the more 
refrangible part. Very probably this may turn out to be an 
ordinary variable star. 
11. Annual Parallax. 
Nearly the whole of Part III. of the “Astronomical Observa- 
tions and Researches made at Dunsink” is devoted to annual 
parallax. The first paper contains a discussion of observations 
of the planetary nebula H. IV. 37 from August 1871 to August 
1872 by Dr. Briinnow. The nebula has in the centre a well-defined 
point resembling a star of the eleventh magnitude. This was 
compared in declination with a star of the tenth magnitude np, and 
the parallax was found to be perfectly insensible, a result which 
agrees well with that of a similar series of observations by Pro- 
fessor Bredichin, of Moscow. 
