MARY W. WHITNEY. 243 
ance in the heavens. Later it was learned that a care- 
ful observer, Schmidt, at Athens, had been scanning the 
region about Corona a few hours before Mr. Birming- 
ham’s discovery, and had seen no star in this position. 
On May 16, the star had fallen below the third magni- 
tude, and about ten days after its first appearance, it 
became invisible to the naked eye, that is, it fell from 
the second to the sixth magnitude in ten days. It is 
now a faint telescopic star of the tenth magnitude, and 
as such it existed in the catalogue of Argelander before 
its sudden outburst. 
In November 1876, Dr. Schmidt, of Athens, observed 
for the first time a star of about the third magnitude in 
the constellation Cygnus. No star 1s recorded by Argel- 
ander in the position of this temporary. Again, as in 
the case of the Wova Corone (called also 7. Corona), 
the star decreased in luminosity from the date of its dis- 
covery, but far more slowly. It had fallen to the sev- 
enth magnitude by January of the following year. It 
has now passed beyond the ken of even powerful tele- 
scopes, and is perhaps about the fourteenth magnitude. 
Because the light of these new stars died away so rap- 
idly, it might be inferred that the conflagration produc- 
ing the outburst was not, comparatively speaking, ex- 
tensive, and therefore that the bodies must be among 
those stars which lie near tothe earth. Dr. Ball, astron- 
omer royal of Dublin, investigated the parallax of the 
Nova Cygni, but he could detect no large stellar paral- 
lax. Therefore it cannot be one of the nearer stars. 
One other temporary I will mention, notso celebrated 
as those I have called your attention to, but bearing 
more closely upon the Woua Andromeda. In May, 1860, 
Auwers discovered a new star of the seventh magnitude 
in the constellation Scorpio. The star lay in the midst 
of the nebula 80 Messier, which is a resolvable ,neb- 
ula, z.e., a remote star cluster. By the middle of June 
127 
