102 TEE NEW SUN AND ITS DISAPPEARANCE. 



A fourth appeared to him to correspond to the line, D, of sodium, and an- 

 other with the characteristic line, b, of magnesium. Finally, two lines, of 

 which the wave lengths are 531 and 451, appeared to coincide, one with the 

 famous line 1474 (Kirchoif's scale), observed in the solar corona during 

 eclipses; the other with a line of the chromosphere. 



It thus appears that the light of this new star is exactly the same in 

 composition as that of the solar chromosphere; and thus we are told that 

 the new comer is a sun, doubtless in general respects like our own, which 

 has met with some great catastrophe whose cause we cannot at present de- 

 termine, but whose real nature is unmistakable. — Scientific American. 



"Our sun," says Prof. Proctor, commenting on the phenomenon, "is one 

 among hundreds of millions, each of which is probably, like it, the centre 

 of a scheme of circling worlds. Each sun is rushing along through space? 

 with its train of worlds, each bearing perhaps, like our earth, its living 

 freight, or more probably each, at some time or other of its existence, be- 

 coming habitable for a longer or shorter period. Thus the suns may be 

 compared to engines, each drawing along its well-freighted train. Accidents 

 among these celestial engines seem fortunately to be rare. A few among 

 the suns aj)pear suddenly (that is in the course of a few hundred years, 

 which in celestial chronometry amounts to a mere instant) to have lost a 

 large part of their energy, as though the supply of fuel had somehow run 

 short. Mishaps of that kind have not attracted much attention, though 

 manifestly it would be a serious matter if our own sun were suddenly to lose 

 three-fourths of his heat, as has happened with the middle star of the Plow^ 

 or ninety-nine hundredths, as has happened *vith the once blazing, but now 

 scarcely visible, orb called Ma in the keel of the star-ship Argo. But when 

 we hear of an accident of the contrary kind — a sun suddenly blazing out 

 with more than a hundred times its usual splendor — a celestial engine whose 

 energies have been over-wrought, so that a sudden explosion has taken 

 place, and the fires, meant to work steadily for the train, have blazed forth 

 to its destruction — we are impressed with the thought that this may possi- 

 bly happen with our own sun. The circumstances are very curious, and 

 though they do not show clearly whether we are or are not exposed to the 

 game kind of danger which has overtaken the worlds circling around those 

 remote suns, they are sufficiently suggestive. 



"Now, a point to which I would call special attention, is that all the ele- 

 ments of the catastrophe, if one may so speak, which has befallen the re- 

 mote sun in the Swan exists in our own sun. At times of marked disturb- 

 ance parts of our sun's surface show the lines of hydrogen bright instead of 

 dark, which means that the flames of hydrogen over those parts of the sun 

 are hotter than the glowing surface of the sun there. We have all heard, 

 again, how Tacchini and Secchi, in Italy, attributed some exceptionally hot 

 weather we had a few years ago to outbursts of glowing magnesium. And, 

 lastly, our sun is well supplied with that element, whatever it is, which 

 gives the bright line of its corona during eclipses; for we now know that 



