STAR. 
ancient observations of the stars, which 
have reached these times, were made by 
Timocharis and Aristillus, about 300 years 
before Christ. The next after them, who 
made a catalogue of the stars visible to the 
naked eye, and registered their places, was 
Hipparchus of Rhodes ; he flourished about 
120 years before Christ, and numbered 1022 
stars. After him, Ptolemy enlarged his 
catalogue to 1026 : Uliig Beigh, the grand- 
father of Tamerlane the Great, about the 
year 1437', constructed a new catalogue, 
more exact than that of Ptolemy, contain- 
ing 1017 stars; Tycho, in the year 1600 , 
determined the places of 777 fixed stars, 
and reduced them to a catalogue : Keplei'’s 
catalogue contained 1163 stars; and that 
of the Prince of Hesse, 400 : Ricciolus en- 
larged Kepler’s catalogue to 1468; and 
John Bayer, a German, had described the 
places of 1725 stars : after this, about 1670, 
Hevelius of Dantzic, composed a cata- 
logue of 1888 fixed stars : Dr. Halley also 
undertook a voyage to the island of St. 
Helena, in order to take the position of the 
stars within the antarctic circle, of which he 
published a catalogue, containing 373 stars : 
but the largest and most complete cata- 
logue ever yet published, is that of our ac- 
curate astronomer Mr. Flamsteed, in his Ce- 
lestial History, which contains nearly 30Q0 
stars ; all whose places are more exactly 
determined in the heavens, than the po- 
sition of cities and other places on the 
earth. 
We ought not, however, to imagine, that 
all the fixed stars are thus numbered, and 
reduced to their respective places in the 
heavens; since their number continually in- 
creases, according to the goodness of the 
telescope, appearing millions beyond mil- 
lions, till, by their immense distance, they 
evade the sight, even though assisted by 
the best instruments. The telescopical 
stars with which Mr. Flamsteed has enrich- 
ed his catalogue, are only the more remark- 
able ones, whose longitudes and latitudes, 
or situations in the heavens, it was thought 
worth while to register and put down. Dr. 
Hook, with a telescope of twelve feet, saw 
78 stars among the Pleiades ; and with a 
longer telescope, still more : and, in the sin- 
gle constellation of Orion, which in Mr. 
Flamsteed’s catalogue, has but 80 stars, 
there have been seen 2000. We may, 
therefore, venture to pronounce the num- 
ber of fixed stars, including the telescopic 
ones as well as those visible to the naked 
eye, to be infinitely great, far beyond what 
it is possible for tlie best astronomers to 
calculate, much less to reduce to order- 
But though the stars are certainly innumer- 
able, yet those visible to the naked eye, in 
one hemisphere, seldom exceed a thou- 
sand ; which, perhaps, may appear strange, 
since, at first sight, their number seems im- 
mensely great : but this is only a deception 
of sight, arising from a confused and tran- 
sient view; for let a person single out a 
jsmall portion of the heavens, and after 
some attention to the situation of the more 
remarkable stars therein, begin to count, 
he will soon be surprised to find how few 
there are therein. However, even the 
number of stars visible to the naked eye, 
small as it is in comparison with that of the 
telescopic ones, is far from being constant ; 
since, besides that the different states of 
the atmosphere render many of the lesser 
stars invisible, some stars have been observ- 
ed to appear and disappear by turns ; par- 
ticularly one in the chair Cussiopeia, in the 
year 1572, which, for some time, outshone 
the biggest of the fixed stars, and in sixteen 
months time, by degrees, vanished quite 
away, and was never seen since: in the 
year 1640, the scholars of Kepler saw a 
star in the right leg of Serpentarius, which 
likewise gradually disappeared: Fabricius, 
in the year 1596, giyes the first account of 
the Stella mira, or wonderful star, in the 
neck of the Whale ; which has been since 
found to appear and disappear periodically, 
its period being seven revolutions in six 
years, but is never quite extinguished. 
Several other new stars have been observ- 
ed : as one by Hevelius, in 1670, and an- 
other by Mr. Kircher, in 1 689. These new 
stars are generally observed in the galaxy, 
or milky way, see Galaxy. 
As to the causes of this appearing and 
disappearing of the fixed stars. Sir Isaac 
Newton conjectures, that as it is possible 
our Sun may sometimes receive an addition 
of fuel by the falling of a comet into it ; so 
the sudden appearance of some stars, which 
formerly were not visible to us, may be 
owing to the falling of a comet upon them, 
and occasioning an uncommon blaze and 
splendour for some time: but that such as 
appear and disappear periodically, and in- 
crease by very slow degrees, seldom ex- 
ceeding the stars of the third magnitude, 
may be such as having large portions of 
their surfaces obscured by spots, may, by 
revolving round their axis, like the Sun, ex- 
pose their lighter and darker parts to us 
successively. 
