SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



bad, and by then the magnitude had fallen to the 

 fifth. Cornu, with the 15-inch Paris achromatic, 

 found its spectrum faint, only containing several 

 bright lines, eight of which he succeeded in mea- 

 suring, and found to be due to incandescent sodium 

 (or more probably helium), hydrogen, and magne- 

 sium, the atmosphere being almost identical with 

 that of our own Sun. Hind found its light reduced 

 to seventh magnitude by December 12th. and by 

 January 10th, 1877, it had fallen another magni- 

 tude. At the end of December 1876 the tint was 

 described as deep red in colour, but the object now 

 appears to be a tiny nebula. 



In 1S85, on August 22nd, a star was simultane- 

 ously discovered by Mr. Isaac Ward, of Belfast, 

 and a Hungarian lady, the Baroness de Pod- 

 maniczky. It was in, or in front of, the great 

 nebula in Andromeda, which is believed to have 

 exhibited unusual brightness for some days previ- 

 ously. The star seems to have reached its greatest 

 brilliancy, sixth magnitude, about the 31st, but by 

 the end of September had fallen to the tenth, and 

 gradually vanished from view. The spectrum of 

 this star appeared to be continuous. 



An unsigned postcard to Dr. Copeland. at the 

 Royal Observatory, Edinburgh, on February 1st, 

 1892, called attention to a new star of fifth magni- 

 tude in Auriga, not far from the star x- The 

 message came from Dr. Anderson as after- 

 wards transpired, a gentleman of whom it was 

 recently said that it was believed he knew the 

 sky so well he could detect a new fifth-magnitude 

 star in almost any part of the heavens. Professor 

 E. C. Pickering, of Harvard College, U.S.A., had 

 latterly begun setting his "policeman" to "patrol 

 the heavens" on every fine night. This is a small 

 photographic transit instrument which auto- 

 matically sweeps the meridian, recording all 

 visible stars. The instrument gave evidence to 

 the effect that it had seen this new comer in R.A. 

 5 h. 25 m., Dec. 30° 21' N., on thirteen occa- 

 sions between December 10th, 1891, and January 

 20th, 1892, but it was certainly not so bright as 

 the eighth magnitude on December 8th. It re- 

 mained fourth or fifth magnitude through February, 

 then rapidly fell to the twelfth by the end of 

 March. On April 26th it was found to be sixteenth 

 magnitude, in August brightening to the tenth, but 

 afterwards falling to the twelfth magnitude. The 

 spectrum was interesting, showing both bright 

 bands and black lines close to them, on the violet 

 side. The various substances seemed to each 

 give two sets of lines, one bright, displaced 

 towards the red, one dark, displaced towards 

 the violet. The amount of displacement showed 

 a relative velocity of about five hundred miles 

 a second, as if a solid globe or a great mass 

 of meteors moving from us had plunged into a 

 nebulous mass moving towards us. It now appears 

 as a nebulous star, and gives a similar spectrum 

 to those objects. In 1893 Mrs. Fleming, on' 



