Curiosities of the Sky

Garrett Serviss
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Curiosities of the Sky by Garrett Serviss Curiosities of the Sky was first published in -.5. and the te*t is in the public do!ain The transcription was done by 'illia! AcClain

BinfoCsattreDpress co!E, 4554 2 printed version of this book is available fro! Sattre Press Bhttp1FFcsky sattreDpress co!E $t includes e*tensive annotations, a new introduction and all the original photographs and diagra!s GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG Preface 'hat (roude says of history is true also of astrono!y1 it is the !ost i!pressive where it transcends e*planation $t is not the !athe!atics of astrono!y, but the wonder and the !ystery that seiHe upon the i!agination The calculation of an eclipse owes all its prestige to the subli!ity of its dataI the operation, in itself, reJuires no !ore !ental effort than the preparation of a railway ti!eDtable The do!inion which astrono!y has always held over the !inds of !en is akin to that of poetryI when the for!er beco!es !erely instructive and the latter purely didactic, both lose their power over the i!agination 2strono!y is known as the oldest of the sciences, and it will be the longestDlived because it will always have arcana that have not been penetrated So!e of the things described in this book are little known to the average reader, while others are well knownI but all possess the fascination of whatever is strange, !arvelous, obscure, or !ysterious DD !agnified, in this case, by the portentous scale of the pheno!ena The idea of the author is to tell about these things in plain language, but with as !uch scientific accuracy as plain language will per!it, showing the wonder that is in the! without getting away fro! the facts Aost of the! have hitherto been discussed only in technical for!, and in treatises that the general public seldo! sees and never reads 2!ong the topics touched upon are1 & The strange unfi*edness of the KKfi*ed stars,LL the vast !igrations of the suns and worlds constituting the universe & The slow passing out of e*istence of those collocations of stars which for thousands of years have for!ed fa!ous KKconstellations,LL preserving the !e!ory of !ythological heroes and heroines, and perhaps of otherwise unrecorded history & The tendency of stars to asse!ble in i!!ense clouds, swar!s, and clusters & The e*istence in so!e of the richest regions of the universe of absolutely black, starless gaps, deeps, or holes, as if one were looking out of a window into the !urkiest night & The !arvelous pheno!ena of new, or te!porary, stars, which appear as suddenly as conflagrations, and often turn into so!ething else as eccentric as the!selves & The a!aHing for!s of the KKwhirlpool,LL KKspiral,LL KKpinwheel,LL and KKlace,LL or KKtress,LL nebulM & The strange surroundings of the sun, only seen in particular circu!stances, but evidently playing a constant part in the daily pheno!ena of the solar syste! & The !ystery of the Nodiacal =ight and the Gegenschein & The e*traordinary transfor!ations undergone by co!ets and their tails & The prodigies of !eteorites and !asses of stone and !etal fallen

fro! the sky & The cataclys!s that have wrecked the !oon & The proble! of life and intelligence on the planet Aars & The proble!atical origin and fate of the asteroids & The strange pheno!ena of the auroral lights 2n atte!pt has been !ade to develop these topics in an orderly way, showing their connection, so that the reader !ay obtain a broad general view of the chief !ysteries and proble!s of astrono!y, and an idea of the i!!ense field of discovery which still lies, al!ost une*plored, before it The 'indows of 2bsolute ?ight To !ost !inds !ystery is !ore fascinating than science But when science itself leads straight up to the borders of !ystery and there co!es to a dead stop, saying, KK2t present $ can no longer see !y way,LL the force of the char! is redoubled 3n the other hand, the illi!itable is no less potent in !ystery than the invisible, whence the dra!atic effect of @eatsL KKstout CorteHLL staring at the boundless Pacific while all his !en look at each other with a wild sur!ise, KKsilent upon a peak in "arien LL $t is with si!ilar feelings that the astrono!er regards certain places where fro! the peaks of the universe his vision see!s to range out into endless e!pty space ,e sees there the shore of his little isth!us, and, beyond, une*plored i!!ensity The na!e, KKcoalDsacks,LL given to these strange voids is hardly descriptive +ather they produce upon the !ind the effect of blank windows in a lonely house on a pitchDdark night, which, when looked at fro! the brilliant interior, beco!e appalling in their rayless !urk $nfinity see!s to acJuire a new !eaning in the presence of these black openings in the sky, for as one continues to gaHe it loses its purely !etaphysical Juality and beco!es a kind of entity, like the ocean The observer is conscious that he can actually see the beginning of its ebon depths, in which the visible universe appears to float like an enchanted island, resplendent within with lights and life and gorgeous spectacles, and encircled with screens of crowded stars, but with its daHHling vistas ending at the fatho!less sea of pure darkness which encloses all The Gala*y, or Ailky 'ay, surrounds the borders of our island in space like a stellar garland, and when openings appear in it they are, by contrast, far !ore i!pressive than the general darkness of the interstellar e*panse seen in other directions %et even that e*panse is not everywhere eJually dark, for it contains gloo!y deeps discernable with careful watching ,ere, too, contrast plays an i!portant part, though less striking than within the galactic region So!e of Sir 'illia! ,erschelLs observations appear to indicate an association between these tenebrious spots and neighboring star clouds and nebulM $t is an illu!inating bit of astrono!ical history that when he was sweeping the then virgin heavens with his great telescopes he was accusto!ed to say to his sister who, noteDbook in hand, waited at his side to take down his words, fresh with the inspiration of discovery1 KKPrepare to writeI the nebulM are co!ingI here space is vacant LL The !ost fa!ous of the KKcoalDsacks,LL and the first to be brought to general attention before astrono!ers had awakened to the significance

of such things, lies adjacent to the KKSouthern Cross,LL and is truly an a!aHing pheno!enon $t is not alone the conspicuousness of this celestial vacancy, opening suddenly in the !idst of one of the richest parts of the Gala*y, that has given it its fa!e, but Juite as !uch the superstitious awe with which it was regarded by the early e*plorers of the South Seas To the!, as well as to those who listened in rapt wonder to their tales, the KKCoalDsackLL see!ed to possess so!e occult connection with the !ystic KKCross LL $n the eyes of the sailors it was not a vacancy so !uch as a sable reality in the sky, and as, shuddering, they stared at it, they piously crossed the!selves $t was another of the !agical wonders of the unknown South, and as such it for!ed the basis of !any a KKwild sur!iseLL and !any a seaDdogLs yarn Scientific investigation has not di!inished its prestige, and today no traveler in the southern he!isphere is indifferent to its fascinating strangeness, while so!e find it the !ost i!pressive spectacle of the antarctic heavens 2ll around, up to the very edge of the yawning gap, the sheen of the Ailky 'ay is surpassingly gloriousI but there, as if in obedience to an al!ighty edict, everything vanishes 2 single faint star is visible within the opening, producing a curious effect upon the sensitive spectator, like the sight of a tiny islet in the !idst of a black, !otionless, waveless tarn The di!ensions of the lagoon of darkness, which is oval or pearDshaped, are eight degrees by five, so that it occupies a space in the sky about one hundred and thirty ti!es greater than the area of the full !oon $t attracts attention as soon as the eye is directed toward the Juarter where it e*ists, and by virtue of the rarity of such pheno!ena it appears a far greater wonder than the drifts of stars that are heaped around it ?ow that observatories are !ultiplying in the southern he!isphere, the great austral KKCoalDsackLL will, no doubt, receive attention proportioned to its i!portance as one of the !ost significant features of the sky 2lready at the Sydney 3bservatory photographs have shown that the southern portion of this "ead Sea of Space is not Juite KKbotto!less,LL although its northern part defies the longest sounding lines of the astrono!er There is a si!ilar, but less perfect, KKcoalDsackLL in the northern he!isphere, in the constellation of KKThe Swan,LL which, strange to say, also contains a wellD!arked figure of a cross outlined by stars This gap lies near the top of the crossDshaped figure $t is best seen by averted vision, which brings out the contrast with the Ailky 'ay, which is Juite brilliant around it $t does not, however, e*ercise the sa!e weird attraction upon the eye as the southern KKCoalDsack,LL for instead of looking like an absolute void in the sky, it rather appears as if a canopy of dark gauHe had been drawn over the stars 'e shall see the possible significance of this appearance later <ust above the southern horiHon of our northern !iddle latitudes, in su!!er, where the Ailky 'ay breaks up into vast sheets of nebulous lu!inosity, lying over and between the constellations Scorpio and Sagittarius, there is a re!arkable asse!blage of KKcoalDsacks,LL though none is of great siHe 3ne of the!, near a conspicuous starDcluster in Scorpio, AO5, is interesting for having been the first of these strange objects noted by ,erschel Probably it was its nearness to AO5 which suggested to his !ind the apparent connection of such vacancies with starDclusters which we have already !entioned But the !ost !arvelous of the KKcoalDsacksLL are those that have been

found by photography in Sagittarius 3ne of BarnardLs earliest and !ost e*cellent photographs includes two of the!, both in the starDcluster AO The larger, which is roughly rectangular in outline, contains one little star, and its s!aller neighbor is luneDshaped DD surely a !ost singular for! for such an object Both are associated with curious dark lanes running through the clustered stars like trails in the woods 2long the borders of these lanes the stars are ranked in parallel rows, and what !ay be called the botto!s of the lanes are not entirely dark, but pebbled with faint stellar points 3ne of the! which skirts the two dark gaps and traverses the cluster along its greatest dia!eter is edged with lines of stars, recalling the align!ent of the trees bordering a (rench highway This road of stars cannot be less than !any billions of !iles in length0 2ll about the cluster the bed of the Gala*y is strangely disturbed, and in places nearly denuded, as if its contents had been raked away to for! the i!!ense stack and the s!aller accu!ulations of stars around it The wellDknown KKTrifid ?ebulaLL is also included in the field of the photograph, which covers a truly !arvelous region, so intricate in its !ingling of nebulM, starDclusters, starDswar!s, starDstrea!s, and dark vacancies that no description can do it justice %et, chaotic as it appears, there is an un!istakable suggestion of unity about it, i!pressing the beholder with the idea that all the different parts are in so!e way connected, and have not been fortuitously thrown together Aiss 2gnes A Clerke !ade the striking re!ark that the dusky lanes in AO are e*e!plified on the largest scale in the great rift dividing the Ailky 'ay, fro! Cygnus in the northern he!isphere all the way to the KKCrossLL in the southern Si!ilar lanes are found in !any other clusters, and they are generally associated with flanking rows of stars, rese!bling in their arrange!ent the thickDset houses and villas along the roadways that traverse the approaches to a great city But to return to the black gaps 2re they really windows in the starDwalls of the universeP So!e of the! look rather as if they had been !ade by a shell fired through a lu!inous target, allowing the eye to range through the hole into the void space beyond $f science is discretely silent about these things, what can the !ore ventureso!e and less responsible i!agination suggestP 'ould a huge KKrunaway sun,LL like 2rcturus, for instance, !ake such an opening if it should pass like a projectile through the Ailky 'ayP $t is at least a sti!ulating inJuiry Being probably !any thousands of ti!es !ore !assive than the galactic stars, such a stellar !issile would not be stopped by the!, though its direction of flight !ight be altered $t would drag the s!all stars lying close to its course out of their spheres, but the ulti!ate tendency of its attraction would be to sweep the! round in its wake, thus producing rather a starDswar! than a vacancy Those that were very close to it !ight be swept away in its rush and beco!e its satellites, careering away with it in its flight into outer spaceI but those that were farther off, and they would, of course, greatly outnu!ber the nearer ones, would tend inward fro! all sides toward the line of flight, as dust and leaves collect behind a speeding !otor Bthough the forces operating would be differentE, and would fill up the hole, if hole it were 2 swar! thus collected should be rounded in outline and bordered with a relatively barren ring fro! which the stars had been KKsuckedLL away $n a general sense the AO cluster answers to this description, but even if we undertook to account for its e*istence by a supposition like the above, the black gaps would re!ain une*plained, unless one could !ake a further draft

on the i!agination and suggest that the stars had been thrown into a vast eddy, or syste! of eddies, whose vortices appear as dark holes 3nly a !aelstro!Dlike !otion could keep such a funnel open, for without regard to the i!pulse derived fro! the projectile, the proper !otions of the stars the!selves would tend to fill it Perhaps so!e other cause of the whirling !otion !ay be found 2s we shall see when we co!e to the spiral nebulM, gyratory !ove!ents are e*ceedingly prevalent throughout the universe, and the structure of the Ailky 'ay is everywhere suggestive of the! But this is haHardous sport even for the i!agination DD to play with suns as if they were but thistleDdown in the wind or corks in a !illDrace 2nother Juestion arises1 'hat is the thickness of the hedge of stars through which the holes penetrateP $s the depth of the openings proportionate to their widthP $n other words, is the Ailky 'ay round in section like a rope, or flat and thin like a ribbonP The answer is not obvious, for we have little or no infor!ation concerning the relative distances of the faint galactic stars $t would be easier, certainly, to conceive of openings in a thin belt than in a !assive ring, for in the first case they would rese!ble !ere rifts and breaks, while in the second they would be like wells or boreDholes Then, too, the fact that the Ailky 'ay is not a continuous body but is !ade up of stars whose actual distances apart is great, offers another JuandaryI persistent and sharply bordered apertures in such an asse!blage are a priori as i!probable, if not i!possible, as straight, narrow holes running through a swar! of bees The difficulty of these Juestions indicates one of the reasons why it has been suggested that the see!ing gaps, or !any of the!, are not openings at all, but opaJue screens cutting off the light fro! stars behind the! That this is Juite possible in so!e cases is shown by BarnardLs later photographs, particularly those of the singular region around the star +ho 3phiuchi ,ere are to be seen so!ber lanes and patches, apparently for!ing a connected syste! which covers an i!!ense space, and which their discoverer thinks !ay constitute a KKdark nebula LL This see!s at first a startling suggestionI but, after all, why should their not be dark nebulM as well as visible onesP $n truth, it has troubled so!e astrono!ers to e*plain the lu!inosity of the bright nebulM, since it is not to be supposed that !atter in so diffuse a state can be incandescent through heat, and phosphorescent light is in itself a !ystery The supposition is also in accord with what we know of the e*istence of dark solid bodies in space Aany bright stars are acco!panied by obscure co!panions, so!eti!es as !assive as the!selvesI the planets are nonDlu!inousI the sa!e is true of !eteors before they plunge into the at!osphere and beco!e heated by frictionI and !any plausible reasons have been found for believing that space contains as !any obscure as shining bodies of great siHe $t is not so difficult, after all, then, to believe that there are i!!ense collections of shadowy gases and !eteoric dust whose presence is only !anifested when they intercept the light co!ing fro! shining bodies behind the! This would account for the apparent e*tinguish!ent of light in open space, which is indicated by the falling off in relative nu!ber of telescopic stars below the tenth !agnitude Even as things are, the a!ount of light co!ing to us fro! stars too faint to be seen with the naked eye is so great that the state!ent of it generally surprises persons who are unfa!iliar with the inner facts of astrono!y $t has been calculated that on a clear night the total starlight fro! the

entire celestial sphere a!ounts to oneDsi*tieth of the light of the full !oonI but of this less than oneDtwentyDfifth is due to stars separately distinguished by the eye $f there were no obscuring !ediu! in space, it is probable that the a!ount of starlight would be noticeably and perhaps enor!ously increased But while it see!s certain that so!e of the obscure spots in the Ailky 'ay are due to the presence of KKdark nebulM,LL or concealing veils of one kind or another, it is eJually certain that there are !any which are true apertures, however they !ay have been for!ed, and by whatever forces they !ay be !aintained These, then, are veritable windows of the Gala*y, and when looking out of the! one is face to face with the great !ystery of infinite space There the known universe visibly ends, but !anifestly space itself does not end there $t is not within the power of thought to conceive an end to space, for the instant we think of a ter!inal point or line the !ind leaps forward to the beyond There !ust be space outside as well as inside Eternity of ti!e and infinity of space are ideas that the intellect cannot fully grasp, but neither can it grasp the idea of a li!itation to either space or ti!e The !etaphysical conceptions of hypergeo!etry, or fourthDdi!ensional space, do not aid us ,aving, then, discovered that the universe is a thing contained in so!ething indefinitely greater than itselfI having looked out of its windows and found only the gloo! of starless night outside DD what conclusions are we to draw concerning the beyondP $t see!s as e!pty as a vacuu!, but is it really soP $f it be, then our universe is a single ato! astray in the infiniteI it is the only island in an ocean without shoresI it is the one oasis in an illi!itable desert Then the Ailky 'ay, with its wideDflung garland of stars, is afloat like a tiny s!okeDwreath a!id a horror of i!!easurable vacancy, or it is an evanescent and solitary ring of sparkling froth cast up for a !o!ent on the viewless billows of i!!ensity (ro! such conclusions the !ind instinctively shrinks $t prefers to think that there is so!ething beyond, though we cannot see it Even the universe could not bear to be alone DD a Crusoe lost in the Cos!os0 2s the inhabitants of the !ost elegant chQteau, with its gardens, parks, and crowds of attendants, would die of loneliness if they did not know that they have neighbors, though not seen, and that a living world of indefinite e*tent surrounds the!, so we, when we perceive that the universe has li!its, wish to feel that it is not solitaryI that beyond the hedges and the hills there are other centers of life and activity Could anything be !ore terrible than the thought of an isolated universeP The greater the being, the greater the aversion to seclusion 3nly the infinite satisfiesI in that alone the !ind finds rest 'e are driven, then, to believe that the universal night which envelopes us is not tenantlessI that as we stare out of the starDfra!ed windows of the Gala*y and see nothing but unifor! blackness, the fault is with our eyes or is due to an obscuring !ediu! Since our universe is li!ited in e*tent, there !ust be other universes beyond it on all sides Perhaps if we could carry our telescopes to the verge of the great KKCoalDsackLL near the KKCross,LL being then on the frontier of our starry syste!, we could discern, sparkling afar off in the vast night, so!e of the outer gala*ies They !ay be grander than ours, just as !any of the suns surrounding us are i!!ensely greater than ours $f we could take our stand so!ewhere in the !idst of i!!ensity and, with vision of infinite reach, look about us, we should perhaps see a countless nu!ber of stellar syste!s, a!id

which ours would be unnoticeable, like a single star a!ong the !ultitude glittering in the terrestial sky on a clear night So!e !ight be in the for! of a wreath, like our ownI so!e !ight be globular, like the great starDclusters in ,ercules and CentaurusI so!e !ight be glittering circles, or disks, or rings within rings $f we could enter the! we should probably find a vast variety of co!position, including ele!ents unknown to terrestrial che!istryI for while the visible universe appears to contain few if any substances not e*isting on the earth or in the sun, we have no warrant to assu!e that others !ay not e*ist in infinite space 2nd how as to gravitationP 'e do not know that gravitation acts beyond the visible universe, but it is reasonable to suppose that it does 2t any rate, if we let go its sustaining hand we are lost, and can only wander hopelessly in our speculations, like children astray $f the e!pire of gravitation is infinite, then the various outer syste!s !ust have so!e, though !easuring by our standards an i!perceptible, attractive influence upon each other, for gravitation never lets go its hold, however great the space over which it is reJuired to act <ust as the stars about us are all in !otion, so the starry syste!s beyond our sight !ay be in !otion, and our syste! as a whole !ay be !oving in concert with the! $f this be so, then after inter!inable ages the aspect of the entire syste! of syste!s !ust change, its various !e!bers assu!ing new positions with respect to one another $n the course of ti!e we !ay even suppose that our universe will approach relatively close to one of the othersI and then, if !en are yet living on the earth, they !ay gli!pse through the openings which reveal nothing to us now, the lights of another nearing star syste!, like the signals of a strange sJuadron, bringing the! the assurance Bwhich can be but an inference at presentE that the ocean of space has other argosies venturing on its li!itless e*panse There re!ains the Juestion of the lu!iniferous ether by whose agency the waves of light are borne through space The ether is as !ysterious as gravitation 'ith regard to ether we only infer its e*istence fro! the effects which we ascribe to it Evidently the ether !ust e*tend as far as the !ost distant visible stars But does it continue on indefinitely in outer spaceP $f it does, then the invisibility of the other syste!s !ust be due to their distance di!inishing the Juantity of light that co!es fro! the! below the li!it of perceptibility, or to the interposition of absorbing !ediaI if it does not, then the reason why we cannot see the! is owing to the absence of a !eans of conveyance for the light waves, as the lack of an interplanetary at!osphere prevents us fro! hearing the thunder of sunDspots B$t is interesting to recall that Ar Edison was once credited with the intention to construct a gigantic !icrophone which should render the roar of sunDspots audible by transfor!ing the electric vibrations into soundDwavesE 3n this supposition each starry syste! would be enveloped in its own globule of ether, and no light could cross fro! one to another But the probability is that both the ether and gravitation are ubiJuitous, and that all the stellar syste!s are i!!ersed in the for!er like clouds of phosphorescent organis!s in the sea So astrono!y carries the !ind fro! height to greater height Aen were long in accepting the proofs of the relative insignificance of the earthI they were !ore Juickly convinced of the co!parative littleness of the solar syste!I and now the evidence assails their reason that what they had regarded as the universe is only one !ote glea!ing in

the sunbea!s of $nfinity StarDClouds, StarDClusters, and StarDStrea!s $n the preceding chapter we have seen so!ething of the strangely co!plicated structure of the Gala*y, or Ailky 'ay 'e now proceed to study !ore co!prehensively that garlanded KKPathway of the Gods LL <udged by the eye alone, the Ailky 'ay is one of the !ost delicately beautiful pheno!ena in the entire real! of nature DD a shi!!er of silvery gauHe stretched across the skyI but studied in the light of its revelations, it is the !ost stupendous object presented to hu!an ken =et us consider, first, its appearance to ordinary vision $ts apparent position in the sky shifts according to the season 3n a serene, cloudless su!!er evening, in the absence of the !oon, whose light obscures it, one sees the Gala*y spanning the heavens fro! north to southeast of the Henith like a phosphorescent arch $n early spring it for!s a si!ilar but, upon the whole, less brilliant arch west of the Henith Between spring and su!!er it lies like a long, faint, twilight band along the northern horiHon 2t the beginning of winter it again for!s an arch, this ti!e spanning the sky fro! east to west, a little north of the Henith These are its positions as viewed fro! the !ean latitude of the >nited States Even the beginner in starDgaHing does not have to watch it throughout the year in order to be convinced that it is, in reality, a great circle, e*tending entirely around the celestial sphere 'e appear to be situated near its center, but its periphery is evidently far away in the depths of space 2lthough to the casual observer it see!s but a delicate scarf of light, brighter in so!e places than in others, but haHy and indefinite at the best, such is not its appearance to those who study it with care They perceive that it is an organic whole, though !arvelously co!ple* in detail The telescope shows that it consists of stars too faint and s!all through e*cess of distance to be separately visible 3f the hundred !illion suns which so!e esti!ates have fi*ed as the probable population of the starry universe, the vast !ajority Bat least thirty to oneE are included in this strange belt of !isty light But they are not unifor!ly distributed in itI on the contrary, they are arrayed in clusters, knots, bunches, clouds, and strea!s The appearance is so!ewhat as if the Gala*y consisted of innu!erable swar!s of silverDwinged bees, !ore or less inter!i*ed, so!e !assed together, so!e crossing the paths of others, but all governed by a single purpose which leads the! to encircle the region of space in which we are situated (ro! the beginning of the syste!atic study of the heavens, the fact has been recogniHed that the for! of the Ailky 'ay denotes the sche!e of the sidereal syste! 2t first it was thought that the shape of the syste! was that of a vast round disk, flat like a cheese, and filled with stars, our sun and his relatively few neighbors being placed near the center 2ccording to this view, the galactic belt was an effect of perspectiveI for when looking in the direction of the plane of the disk, the eye ranged through an i!!ense e*tension of stars which blended into a gli!!ering blur, surrounding us like a ringI while when looking out fro! the sides of the disk we saw but few stars, and in those directions the heavens appeared relatively blank (inally it was recogniHed that this theory did not correspond with the observed appearances, and it beca!e evident that the Ailky 'ay was not a !ere

effect of perspective, but an actual band of enor!ously distant stars, for!ing a circle about the sphere, the central opening of the ring Bcontaining !any scattered starsE being !any ti!es broader than the width of the ring itself 3ur sun is one of the scattered stars in the central opening 2s already re!arked, the ring of the Gala*y is very irregular, and in places it is partly broken 'ith its sinuous outline, its pendant sprays, its graceful and accordant curves, its bunching of !asses, its occasional interstices, and the !anifest order of a general plan governing the ju!ble of its details, it bears a re!arkable rese!blance to a garland DD a fact which appears the !ore wonderful when we recall its co!position That an el!Dtree should trace the lines of beauty with its leafy and pendulous branches does not surprise usI but we can only gaHe with growing a!aHe!ent when we behold a hundred !illion suns i!itating the for! of a chaplet0 2nd then we have to re!e!ber that this for! furnishes the groundDplan of the universe 2s an indication of the e*traordinary speculations to which the !ystery of the Ailky 'ay has given rise, a theory recently B-.5.E proposed by Prof George C Co!stock !ay be !entioned Starting with the data BfirstE that the nu!ber of stars increases as the Ailky 'ay is approached, and reaches a !a*i!u! in its plane, while on the other hand the nu!ber of nebulM is greatest outside the Ailky 'ay and increases with distance fro! it, and BsecondE that the Ailky 'ay, although a co!plete ring, is broad and diffuse on one side through oneDhalf its course DD that half alone containing nebulM DD and relatively narrow and well defined on the opposite side, the author of this singular speculation avers that these facts can best be e*plained by supposing that the invisible universe consists of two interpenetrating parts, one of which is a chaos of indefinite e*tent, strewn with stars and nebulous dust, and the other a long, broad but co!paratively thin cluster of stars, including the sun as one of its central !e!bers This flat starDcluster is conceived to be !oving edgewise through the chaos, and, according to Professor Co!stock, it acts after the !anner of a snowDplough sweeping away the cos!ic dust and piling it on either hand above and below the plane of the !oving cluster $t thus for!s a transparent rift, through which we see farther and co!!and a view of !ore stars than through the intensified dustDclouds on either hand This rift is the Ailky 'ay The dust thrown aside toward the poles of the Ailky 'ay is the substance of the nebulM which abound there 2head, where the front of the starDplough is clearing the way, the chaos is nearer at hand, and conseJuently there the rift subtends a broader angle, and is filled with pri!ordial dust, which, having been anne*ed by the vanguard of the starDswar!, for!s the nebulM seen only in that part of the Ailky 'ay But behind, the rift appears narrow because there we look farther away between dustDclouds produced ages ago by the front of the plough, and no scattered dust re!ains in that part of the rift $n Juoting an outline of this strikingly original theory the present writer should not be understood as assenting to it That it appears biHarre is not, in itself, a reason for rejecting it, when we are dealing with so proble!atical and enig!atical a subject as the Ailky 'ayI but the serious objection is that the theory does not sufficiently accord with the observed pheno!ena There is too !uch evidence that the Ailky 'ay is an organic syste!, however fantastic its for!, to per!it the belief that it can only be a rift in chaotic clouds 2s with every organis!, we find that its parts are !ore or

less clearly repeated in its ense!ble 2!ong all the strange things that the Ailky 'ay contains there is nothing so e*traordinary as itself Every astrono!er !ust !any ti!es have found hi!self !arveling at it in those co!paratively rare nights when it shows all its beauty and all its strangeness $n its great broken rifts, divisions, and spirals are found the gigantic prototypes of si!ilar for!s in its starDclouds and clusters 2s we have said, it deter!ines the general shape of the whole sidereal syste! So!e of the brightest stars in the sky appear to hang like jewels suspended at the ends of tassels dropped fro! the Gala*y 2!ong these pendants are the Pleiades and the ,yades 3rion, too, the KKAighty ,unter,LL is caught in KKa loop of lightLL thrown out fro! it The !ajority of the great firstD!agnitude stars see! related to it, as if they for!ed an inner ring inclined at an angle of so!e twenty degrees to its plane Aany of the long curves that set off fro! it on both sides are acco!panied by corresponding curves of lucid stars $n a word, it offers every appearance of structural connection with the entire starry syste! That the universe should have assu!ed the for! of a wreath is certainly a !atter for astonish!entI but it would have been still !ore astonishing if it had been a cube, a rho!boid, or a dodecahedron, for then we should have had to suppose that so!ething rese!bling the forces that shape crystals had acted upon the stars, and the difficulty of e*plaining the universe by the laws of gravitation would have been increased (ro! the Ailky 'ay as a whole we pass to the vast clouds, swar!s, and clusters of stars of which it is !ade up $t !ay be, as so!e astrono!ers hold, that !ost of the galactic stars are !uch s!aller than the sun, so that their faintness is not due entirely to the effect of distance Still, their intrinsic brilliance attests their solar character, and considering their re!oteness, which has been esti!ated at not less than ten thousand to twenty thousand lightDyears Ba lightDyear is eJual to nearly si* thousand thousand !illion !ilesE their actual !asses cannot be e*tre!ely s!all The !inutest of the! are entitled to be regarded as real suns, and they vary enor!ously in !agnitude The effects of their attractions upon one another can only be inferred fro! their clustering, because their relative !ove!ents are not apparent on account of the brevity of the observations that we can !ake But i!agine a being for who! a !illion years would be but as a flitting !o!entI to hi! the Ailky 'ay would appear in a state of ceaseless agitation DD swirling with KKa fury of whirlpool !otion LL The cloudDlike aspect of large parts of the Gala*y !ust always have attracted attention, even fro! nakedDeye observers, but the true starDclouds were first satisfactorily represented in BarnardLs photographs The rese!blance to actual clouds is often startling So!e are closeDpacked and dense, like cu!uliI so!e are wispy or !ottled, like cirri The rifts and !odulations, as well as the general outlines, are the sa!e as those of clouds of vapor or dust, and one notices also the characteristic thinning out at the edges But we !ust beware of supposing that the co!ponent suns are thickly crowded as the particles for!ing an ordinary cloud They look, indeed, as if they were !atted together, because of the irradiation of light, but in reality !illions and billions of !iles separate each star fro! its neighbors ?evertheless they for! real asse!blages, whose !e!bers are far !ore closely related to one another than is our sun to the stars around hi!, and if we were in the Ailky 'ay the aspect of the nocturnal sky would be !arvelously different fro! its present appearance

Stellar clouds are characteristic of the Gala*y and are not found beyond its borders, e*cept in the KKAagellanic CloudsLL of the southern he!isphere, which rese!ble detached portions of the Ailky 'ay These singular objects for! as striking a peculiarity of the austral heavens as does the great KKCoalDsackLL described in Chapter - But it is their isolation that !akes the! so re!arkable, for their co!position is essentially galactic, and if they were included within its boundaries they would not appear !ore wonderful than !any other parts of the Ailky 'ay Placed where they are, they look like !asses fallen fro! the great stellar arch They are full of nebulM and starDclusters, and show striking evidences of spiral !ove!ent StarDswar!s, which are also characteristic features of the Gala*y, differ fro! starDclouds very !uch in the way that their na!e would i!ply DD i e , their co!ponent stars are so arranged, even when they are countless in nu!ber, that the idea of an e*ceedingly nu!erous asse!blage rather than that of a cloud is i!pressed on the observerLs !ind $n a starDswar! the separate !e!bers are distinguishable because they are either larger or nearer than the stars co!posing a KKcloud LL 2 splendid e*a!ple of a true starDswar! is furnished by Chi Persei, in that part of the Ailky 'ay which runs between the constellations Perseus and Cassiopeia This swar! is !uch coarser than !any others, and can be seen by the naked eye $n a s!all telescope it appears double, as if the suns co!posing it had divided into two parties which keep on their way side by side, with so!e co!!ingling of their !e!bers where the skirts of the two co!panies co!e in contact S!aller than either starDclouds or starDswar!s, and differing fro! both in their organiHation, are starDclusters These, unlike the others, are found outside as well as inside the Ailky 'ay, although they are !ore nu!erous inside its boundaries than elsewhere The ter! starDcluster is so!eti!es applied, though i!properly, to asse!blages which are rather groups, such, for instance, as the Pleiades $n their !ost characteristic aspect starDclusters are of a globular shape DD globes of suns0 2 fa!ous e*a!ple of a globular starDcluster, but one not included in the Ailky 'ay, is the KKGreat Cluster in ,ercules LL This is barely visible to the naked eye, but a s!all telescope shows its character, and in a large one it presents a !arvelous spectacle Photographs of such clusters are, perhaps, less effective than those of starDclouds, because the central condensation of stars in the! is so great that their light beco!es blended in an indistinguishable blur The beautiful effect of the incessant play of infinitesi!al rays over the apparently co!pact surface of the cluster, as if it were a globe of the finest frosted silver shining in an electric bea!, is also lost in a photograph Still, even to the eye looking directly at the cluster through a powerful telescope, the central part of the wonderful congregation see!s al!ost a solid !ass in which the stars are packed like the ice crystals in a snowball The sa!e Juestion rises to the lips of every observer1 ,ow can they possibly have been brought into such a situationP The !arvel does not grow less when we know that, instead of being closely co!pacted, the stars of the cluster are probably separated by !illions of !ilesI for we know that their distances apart are slight as co!pared with their re!oteness fro! the Earth Sir 'illia! ,erschel esti!ated their nu!ber to be about fourteen thousand, but in fact they are uncountable $f we could view the! fro! a point just within the edge of the asse!blage, they would offer the appearance of a hollow he!isphere e!blaHoned with stars of astonishing brilliancyI the nearDby ones unparalleled in

splendor by any celestial object known to us, while the !ore distant ones would rese!ble ordinary stars 2n inhabitant of the cluster would not know, e*cept by a process of ratiocination, that he was dwelling in a globular asse!blage of sunsI only fro! a point far outside would their spherical arrange!ent beco!e evident to the eye $!agine fourteenDthousand fireDballoons with an approach to regularity in a spherical space DD say, ten !iles in dia!eterI there would be an average of less than thirty in every cubic !ile, and it would be necessary to go to a considerable distance in order to see the! as a globular aggregationI yet fro! a point sufficiently far away they would blend into a glowing ball Photographs show even better than the best telescopic views that the great cluster is surrounded with a !ultitude of dispersed stars, suggestively arrayed in !ore or less curving lines, which radiate fro! the principle !ass, with which their connection is !anifest These stars, situated outside the central sphere, look so!ewhat like vagrant bees buHHing round a dense swar! where the Jueen bee is sitting %et while there is so !uch to suggest the operation of central forces, bringing and keeping the !e!bers of the cluster together, the attentive observer is also i!pressed with the idea that the whole wonderful pheno!enon !ay be the result of e*plosion 2s soon as this thought seiHes the !ind, confir!ation of it see!s to be found in the appearance of the outlying stars, which could be as readily e*plained by the supposition that they have been blown apart as that they have flocked together toward a center The probable fact that the stars constituting the cluster are very !uch s!aller than our sun !ight be regarded as favoring the hypothesis of an e*plosion 3f their real siHe we know nothing, but, on the basis of an uncertain esti!ate of their paralla*, it has been calculated that they !ay average fortyDfive thousand !iles in dia!eter DD so!ething !ore than half the dia!eter of the planet <upiter 2ssu!ing the sa!e !ean density, fourteen thousand such stars !ight have been for!ed by the e*plosion of a body about twice the siHe of the sun This recalls the theory of 3lbers, which has never been altogether abandoned or disproved, that the 2steroids were for!ed by the e*plosion of a planet circulating between the orbits of Aars and <upiter The 2steroids, whatever their !anner of origin, for! a ring around the sunI but, of course, the e*plosion of a great independent body, not originally revolving about a superior center of gravitational force, would not result in the for!ation of a ring of s!all bodies, but rather of a dispersed !ass of the! But back of any speculation of this kind lies the proble!, at present insoluble1 ,ow could the e*plosion be producedP BSee the Juestion of e*plosions in Chapters 9 and -6E Then, on the other hand, we have the observation of ,erschel, since abundantly confir!ed, that space is unusually vacant in the i!!ediate neighborhood of condensed starDclusters and nebulM, which, as far as it goes, !ight be taken as an indication that the asse!bled stars had been drawn together by their !utual attractions, and that the tendency to aggregation is still bringing new !e!bers toward the cluster But in that case there !ust have been an original condensation of stars at that point in space This could probably have been produced by the coagulation of a great nebula into stellar nuclei, a process which see!s now to be taking place in the 3rion ?ebula 2 yet !ore re!arkable globular starDcluster e*ists in the southern he!isphere, 3!ega Centauri $n this case the central condensation of stars presents an al!ost unifor! blaHe of light =ike the ,ercules

cluster, that in Centaurus is surrounded with stars scattered over a broad field and showing an appearance of radial arrange!ent $n fact, e*cept for its greater richness, 3!ega Centauri is an e*act duplicate of its northern rival Each appears to an i!aginative spectator as a veritable KKcity of suns LL Aathe!atics shrinks fro! the task of disentangling the !aHe of !otions in such an asse!blage $t would see! that the chance of collisions is not to be neglected, and this idea finds a certain degree of confir!ation in the appearance of KKte!porary starsLL which have !ore than once blaHed out in, or close by, globular starDclusters This leads up to the notable fact, first established by Professor Bailey a few years ago, that such clusters are populous with variable stars 3!ega Centauri and the ,ercules cluster are especially re!arkable in this respect The variables found in the! are all of short period and the changes of light show a noteworthy tendency to unifor!ity The first thought is that these pheno!ena !ust be due to collisions a!ong the crowded stars, but, if so, the encounters cannot be between the stars the!selves, but probably between stars and !eteor swar!s revolving around the! Such periodic collisions !ight go on for ages without the !eteors being e*hausted by incorporation with the stars This e*planation appears all the !ore probable because one would naturally e*pect that flocks of !eteors would abound in a close aggregation of stars $t is also consistent with PerrineLs discovery DD that the globular star clusters are powdered with !inute stars strewn thickly a!ong the brighter ones $n speaking of Professor Co!stockLs e*traordinary theory of the Ailky 'ay, the fact was !entioned that, broadly speaking, the nebulM are less nu!erous in the galactic belt than in the co!paratively open spaces on either side of it, but that they are, nevertheless, abundant in the broader half of the Ailky 'ay which he designates as the front of the gigantic KKploughLL supposed to be forcing its way through the enveloping chaos $n and around the Sagittarius region the inter!ingling of nebulM and galactic star clouds and clusters is particularly re!arkable That there is a causal connection no thoughtful person can doubt 'e are unable to get away fro! the evidence that a nebula is like a seedDground fro! which stars spring forthI or we !ay say that nebulM rese!ble clouds in whose boso! raindrops are for!ing The wonderful aspect of the ad!i*tures of nebulM and starDclusters in Sagittarius has been described in Chapter - 'e now co!e to a still !ore e*traordinary pheno!enon of this kind DD the Pleiades nebulM The group of the Pleiades, although lying outside the !ain course of the Gala*y, is connected with it by a faint loop, and is the scene of the !ost re!arkable association of stars and nebulous !atter known in the visible universe The naked eye is unaware of the e*istence of nebulM in the Pleiades, or, at the best, !erely suspects that there is so!ething of the kind thereI and even the !ost powerful telescopes are far fro! revealing the full wonder of the spectacleI but in photographs which have been e*posed for !any hours consecutively, in order to accu!ulate the i!pression of the actinic rays, the revelation is stunning The principle stars are seen surrounded by, and, as it were, drowned in, dense nebulous clouds of an unparalleled kind The for!s assu!ed by these clouds see! at first sight ine*plicable They look like fleeces, or perhaps !ore like splashes and daubs of lu!inous paint dashed carelessly fro! a brush But closer inspection shows that they are, to a large e*tent, woven out of innu!erable threads of fil!y

te*ture, and there are !any indications of spiral tendencies Each of the bright stars of the group DD 2lcyone, Aerope, Aaia, Electra, Taygeta, 2tlas DD is the focus of a dense fog Btotally invisible, re!e!ber, alike to the naked eye and to the telescopeE, and these particular stars are veiled fro! sight behind the strange !ists +unning in all directions across the relatively open spaces are nebulous wisps and streaks of the !ost curious for!s 3n so!e of the nebular lines, which are either straight throughout, or if they change direction do so at an angle, little stars are strung like beads $n one case seven or eight stars are thus aligned, and, as if to e!phasiHe their dependence upon the chain which connects the!, when it !akes a slight bend the file of stars turns the sa!e way Aany other star rows in the group suggest by their arrange!ent that they, too, were once strung upon si!ilar threads which have now disappeared, leaving the stars spaced along their ancient tracks 'e see! forced to the conclusion that there was a ti!e when the Pleiades were e!bedded in a vast nebula rese!bling that of 3rion, and that the cloud has now beco!e so rare by gradual condensation into stars that the !erest trace of it re!ains, and this would probably have escaped detection but for the re!arkable actinic power of the radiant !atter of which it consists The richness of !any of these faint nebulous !asses in ultraDviolet radiations, which are those that specifically affect the photographic plate, is the cause of the !arvelous revelatory power of celestial photography So the veritable unseen universe, as distinguished fro! the KKunseen universeLL of !etaphysical speculation, is shown to us 2 different kind of association between stars and nebulM is shown in so!e surprising photographic objects in the constellation Cygnus, where long, wispy nebulM, billions of !iles in length, so!e of the! looking like tresses strea!ing in a breeHe, lie a!id fields of stars which see! related to the! But the relation is of a !ost singular kind, for notwithstanding the delicate structure of the long nebulM they appear to act as barriers, causing the stars to heap the!selves on one side The stars are two, three, or four ti!es as nu!erous on one side of the nebulM as on the other These nebulM, as far as appearance goes, !ight be likened to rail fences, or thin hedges, against which the wind is driving drifts of powdery snow, which, while scattered plentifully all around, tends to bank itself on the leeward side of the obstruction The i!agination is at a loss to account for these e*traordinary pheno!enaI yet there they are, faithfully giving us their i!ages whenever the photographic plate is e*posed to their radiations Thus the !ore we see of the universe with i!proved !ethods of observation, and the !ore we invent aids to hu!an senses, each enabling us to penetrate a little deeper into the unseen, the greater beco!es the !ystery The telescope carried us far, photography is carrying us still fartherI but what as yet uni!agined instru!ent will take us to the botto!, the top, and the endP 2nd then, what hitherto untried power of thought will enable us to co!prehend the !eaning of it allP Stellar Aigrations To the untrained eye the stars and the planets are not distinguishable $t is custo!ary to call the! all alike KKstars LL But since the planets !ore or less rapidly change their places in the sky, in conseJuence of their revolution about the sun, while the stars

proper see! to re!ain always in the sa!e relative positions, the latter are spoken of as KKfi*ed stars LL $n the beginnings of astrono!y it was not known that the KKfi*ed starsLL had any !otion independent of their apparent annual revolution with the whole sky about the earth as a see!ing center ?ow, however, we know that the ter! KKfi*ed starsLL is parado*ical, for there is not a single really fi*ed object in the whole celestial sphere The apparent fi*ity in the positions of the stars is due to their i!!ense distance, co!bined with the shortness of the ti!e during which we are able to observe the! $t is like viewing the plu!e of s!oke issuing fro! a stea!er, hull down, at sea1 if one does not continue to watch it for a long ti!e it appears to be !otionless, although in reality it !ay be traveling at great speed across the line of sight Even the planets see! fi*ed in position if one watches the! for a single night only, and the !ore distant ones do not sensibly change their places, e*cept after !any nights of observation ?eptune, for instance, !oves but little !ore than two degrees in the course of an entire year, and in a !onth its change of place is only about oneDthird of the dia!eter of the full !oon %et, fi*ed as they see!, the stars are actually !oving with a speed in co!parison with which, in so!e cases, the planets !ight al!ost be said to stand fast in their tracks <upiterLs speed in his orbit is about eight !iles per second, ?eptuneLs is less than three and oneDhalf !iles, and the earthLs is about eighteen and oneDhalf !ilesI while there are KKfi*ed starsLL which !ove two hundred or three hundred !iles per second They do not all, however, !ove with so great a velocity, for so!e appear to travel no faster than the planets But in all cases, notwithstanding their real speed, longDcontinued and e*ceedingly careful observations are reJuired to de!onstrate that they are !oving at all ?o !ore overwhel!ing i!pression of the frightful depths of space in which the stars are buried can be obtained than by reflecting upon the fact that a star whose actual !otion across the line of sight a!ounts to two hundred !iles per second does not change its apparent place in the sky, in the course of a thousand years, sufficiently to be noticed by the casual observer of the heavens0 There is one vast difference between the !otions of the stars and those of the planets to which attention should be at once called1 the planets, being under the control of a central force e!anating fro! their i!!ediate !aster, the sun, all !ove in the sa!e direction and in orbits concentric about the sunI the stars, on the other hand, !ove in every conceivable direction and have no apparent center of !otion, for all efforts to discover such a center have failed 2t one ti!e, when theology had finally to accept the facts of science, a grandiose conception arose in so!e pious !inds, according to which the Throne of God was situated at the e*act center of ,is Creation, and, seated there, ,e watched the !agnificent spectacle of the starry syste!s obediently revolving around ,i! 2strono!ical discoveries and speculations see!ed for a ti!e to afford so!e warrant for this view, which was, !oreover, an acceptable substitute for the abandoned geocentric theory in !inds that could only conceive of God as a superhu!an artificer, constantly ad!iring his own work ?o longer ago than the !iddle of the nineteenth century a Ger!an astrono!er, Aaedler, believed that he had actually found the location of the center about which the stellar universe revolved ,e placed it in the group of the Pleiades, and upon his authority an e*traordinary i!aginative picture was so!eti!es drawn of the star 2lcyone, the brightest of the Pleiades, as the very seat of the 2l!ighty This idea

even see!ed to gain a kind of traditional support fro! the !ystic significance, without known historical origin, which has for !any ages, and a!ong widely separated peoples, been attached to the re!arkable group of which 2lcyone is the chief But since AaedlerLs ti!e it has been de!onstrated that the Pleiades cannot be the center of revolution of the universe, and, as already re!arked, all atte!pts to find or fi* such a center have proved abortive %et so powerful was the hold that the theory took upon the popular i!agination, that even today astrono!ers are often asked if 2lcyone is not the probable site of KK<erusale! the Golden LL $f there were a discoverable center of predo!inant gravitative power, to which the !otions of all the stars could be referred, those !otions would appear less !ysterious, and we should then be able to conclude that the universe was, as a whole, a prototype of the subsidiary syste!s of which it is co!posed 'e should look si!ply to the law of gravitation for an e*planation, and, naturally, the center would be placed within the opening enclosed by the Ailky 'ay $f it were there the Ailky 'ay itself should e*hibit signs of revolution about it, like a wheel turning upon its hub ?o theory of the star !otions as a whole could stand which failed to take account of the Ailky 'ay as the basis of all But the very for! of that divided wreath of stars forbids the assu!ption of its revolution about a center Even if it could be conceived as a wheel having no !aterial center it would not have the for! which it actually presents 2s was shown in Chapter 4, there is abundant evidence of !otion in the Ailky 'ayI but it is not !otion of the syste! as a whole, but !otion affecting its separate parts $nstead of all !oving one way, the galactic stars, as far as their !ove!ents can be inferred, are governed by local influences and conditions They appear to travel crosswise and in contrary directions, and perhaps they eddy around foci where great nu!bers have asse!bledI but of a universal revolution involving the entire !ass we have no evidence Aost of our knowledge of star !otions, called KKproper !otions,LL relates to individual stars and to a few groups which happen to be so near that the effects of their !ove!ents are !easurable $n so!e cases the !otion is so rapid Bnot in appearance, but in realityE that the chief difficulty is to i!agine how it can have been i!parted, and what will eventually beco!e of the KKrunaways LL 'ithout a collision, or a series of very close approaches to great gravitational centers, a star traveling through space at the rate of two hundred or three hundred !iles per second could not be arrested or turned into an orbit which would keep it forever flying within the li!its of the visible universe 2 fa!ous e*a!ple of these speeding stars is KK-O:5 Groo!bridge,LL a star of only the si*th !agnitude, and conseJuently just visible to the naked eye, whose !otion across the line of sight is so rapid that it !oves upon the face of the sky a distance eJual to the apparent dia!eter of the !oon every 4O5 years The distance of this star is at least 455,555,555,555,555 !iles, and !ay be two or three ti!es greater, so that its actual speed cannot be less than two hundred, and !ay be as !uch as four hundred, !iles per second $t could be turned into a new course by a close approach to a great sun, but it could only be stopped by collision, headDon, with a body of enor!ous !ass Barring such accidents it !ust, as far as we can see, keep on until it has traversed our stellar syste!, whence in !ay escape and pass out into space beyond, to join, perhaps, one of those other universes of which we have spoken 2rcturus, one of the greatest suns in the universe, is also a runaway, whose speed of flight has

been esti!ated all the way fro! fifty to two hundred !iles per second 2rcturus, we have every reason to believe, possesses hundreds of ti!es the !ass of our sun DD think, then, of the prodigious !o!entu! that its !otion i!plies0 Sirius !oves !ore !oderately, its !otion across the line of sight a!ounting to only ten !iles per second, but it is at the sa!e ti!e approaching the sun at about the sa!e speed, its actual velocity in space being the resultant of the two displace!ents 'hat has been said about the !otion of Sirius brings us to another aspect of this subject The fact is, that in every case of stellar !otion the displace!ent that we observe represents only a part of the actual !ove!ent of the star concerned There are stars whose !otion carries the! straight toward or straight away fro! the earth, and such stars, of course, show no cross !otion But the vast !ajority are traveling in paths inclined fro! a perpendicular to our line of sight Taken as a whole, the stars !ay be said to be flying about like the !olecules in a !ass of gas The discovery of the radial co!ponent in the !ove!ents of the stars is due to the spectroscope $f a star is approaching, its spectral lines are shifted toward the violet end of the spectru! by an a!ount depending upon the velocity of approachI if it is receding, the lines are correspondingly shifted toward the red end Spectroscopic observation, then, co!bined with !icro!etric !easure!ents of the cross !otion, enables us to detect the real !ove!ent of the star in space So!eti!es it happens that a starLs radial !ove!ent is periodically reversedI first it approaches, and then it recedes This indicates that it is revolving around a nearDby co!panion, which is often invisible, and superposed upon this !otion is that of the two stars concerned, which together !ay be approaching or receding or traveling across the line of sight Thus the co!plications involved in the stellar !otions are often e*ceedingly great and puHHling %et another source of co!plication e*ists in the !ove!ent of our own star, the sun There is no !ore difficult proble! in astrono!y than that of disentangling the effects of the solar !otion fro! those of the !otions of the other stars But the proble!, difficult as it is, has been solved, and upon its solution depends our knowledge of the speed and direction of the !ove!ent of the solar syste! through space, for of course the sun carries its planets with it 3ne ele!ent of the solution is found in the fact that, as a result of perspective, the stars toward which we are going appear to !ove apart toward all points of the co!pass, while those behind appear to close up together Then the spectroscopic principle already !entioned is invoked for studying the shift of the lines, which is toward the violet in the stars ahead of us and toward the red in those that we are leaving behind 3f course the effects of the independent !otions of the stars !ust be carefully e*cluded The result of the studies devoted to this subject is to show that we are traveling at a speed of twelve to fifteen !iles per second in a northerly direction, toward the border of the constellations ,ercules and =yra 2 curious fact is that the !ore recent esti!ates show that the direction is not very !uch out of a straight line drawn fro! the sun to the star )ega, one of the !ost !agnificent suns in the heavens But it should not be inferred fro! this that )ega is drawing us onI it is too distant for its gravitation to have such an effect Aany unaccusto!ed thoughts are suggested by this !ighty voyage of the solar syste! 'hence have we co!e, and whither do we goP Every year of our lives we advance at least :/R,555,555 !iles Since the traditional

ti!e of 2da! the sun has led his planets through the wastes of space no less than 44R,555,555,555 !iles, or !ore than 4655 ti!es the distance that separates hi! fro! the earth Go back in i!agination to the geologic ages, and try to co!prehend the distance over which the earth has flown 'here was our little planet when it e!erged out of the clouds of chaosP 'here was the sun when his KKthunder !archLL beganP 'hat strange constellations shone down upon our globe when its !asters of life were the !onstrous beasts of the KK2ge of +eptilesLLP 2 !illion years is not !uch of a span of ti!e in geologic reckoning, yet a !illion years ago the earth was farther fro! its present place in space than any of the stars with a !easurable paralla* are now $t was !ore than seven ti!es as far as Sirius, nearly fourteen ti!es as far as 2lpha Centauri, three ti!es as far as )ega, and twice as far as 2rcturus But so!e geologists de!and two hundred, three hundred, even one thousand !illion years to enable the! to account for the evolutionary develop!ent of the earth and its inhabitants $n a thousand !illion years the earth would have traveled farther than fro! the re!otest conceivable depths of the Ailky 'ay0 3ther curious reflections arise when we think of the for! of the earthLs track as it follows the lead of the sun, in a journey which has neither known beginning nor conceivable end There are probably !any !inds which have found a kind of consolation in the thought that every year the globe returns to the sa!e place, on the sa!e side of the sun This idea !ay have an occult connection with our traditional regard for anniversaries 'hen that period of the year returns at which any great event in our lives has occurred we have the feeling that the earth, in its annual round, has, in a !anner, brought us back to the scene of that event 'e think of the earthLs orbit as a wellDworn path which we traverse !any ti!es in the course of a lifeti!e $t see!s fa!iliar to us, and we grow to have a sort of attach!ent to it The sun we are accusto!ed to regard as a fi*ed center in space, like the !ill or pu!p around which the harnessed patient !ule !akes his endless circuits But the real fact is that the earth never returns to the place in space where it has once Juitted $n conseJuence of the !otion of the sun carrying the earth and the other planets along, the track pursued by our globe is a vast spiral in space continually developing and never returning upon its course $t is probable that the tracks of the sun and the others stars are also irregular, and possibly spiral, although, as far as can be at present deter!ined, they appear to be practically straight Every star, wherever it !ay be situated, is attracted by its fellowDstars fro! !any sides at once, and although the force is !ini!iHed by distance, yet in the course of !any ages its effects !ust beco!e !anifest =ooked at fro! another side, is there not so!ething i!!ensely sti!ulating and pleasing to the i!agination in the idea of so stupendous a journey, which !akes all of us the greatest of travelersP $n the course of a long life a !an is transported through space thirty thousand !illion !ilesI ,alleyLs Co!et does not travel oneDJuarter as far in !aking one of its i!!ense circuits 2nd there are adventures on this voyage of which we are just beginning to learn to take account Space is full of strange things, and the earth !ust encounter so!e of the! as it advances through the unknown Aany singular speculations have been indulged in by astrono!ers concerning the possible effects upon the earth of the varying state of the space that it traverses Even the alternation of hot and glacial periods has so!eti!es been ascribed to this source 'hen tropical life flourished around the

poles, as the re!ains in the rocks assure us, the needed high te!perature !ay, it has been thought, have been derived fro! the presence of the earth in a war! region of space Then, too, there is a certain interest for us in the thought of what our fa!iliar planet has passed through 'e cannot but ad!ire it for its long journeying as we ad!ire the traveler who co!es to us fro! re!ote and une*plored lands, or as we gaHe with a glow of interest upon the first loco!otive that has crossed a continent, or a ship that has visited the 2rctic or 2ntarctic regions $f we !ay trust the indications of the present course, the earth, piloted by the sun, has co!e fro! the Ailky 'ay in the far south and !ay eventually rejoin that !ighty band of stars in the far north 'hile the stars in general appear to travel independently of one another, e*cept when they are co!bined in binary or trinary syste!s, there are notable e*ceptions to this rule $n so!e Juarters of the sky we behold veritable !igrations of entire groups of stars whose !e!bers are too widely separated to show any indications of revolution about a co!!on center of gravity This leads us back again to the wonderful group of the Pleiades 2ll of the principle stars co!posing that group are traveling in virtually parallel lines 'hatever force set the! going evidently acted upon all alike This !ight be e*plained by the assu!ption that when the original projective force acted upon the! they were !ore closely united than they are at present, and that in drifting apart they have not lost the i!pulse of the pri!al !otion 3r it !ay be supposed that they are carried along by so!e current in space, although it would be e*ceedingly difficult, in the present state of our knowledge, to e*plain the nature of such a current %et the theory of a current has been proposed 2s to an attractive center around which they !ight revolve, none has been found 2nother instance of si!ilar KKstarDdriftLL is furnished by five of the seven stars constituting the figure of the KKGreat "ipper LL $n this case the stars concerned are separated very widely, the two e*tre!e ones by not less than fifteen degrees, so that the idea of a co!!on !otion would never have been suggested by their aspect in the skyI and the case beco!es the !ore re!arkable fro! the fact that a!ong and between the! there are other stars, so!e of the sa!e !agnitude, which do not share their !otion, but are traveling in other directions Still other e*a!ples of the sa!e pheno!enon are found in other parts of the sky 3f course, in the case of co!pact starDclusters, it is assu!ed that all the !e!bers share a like !otion of translation through space, and the sa!e is probably true of dense starDswar!s and starDclouds The whole Juestion of starDdrift has lately assu!ed a new phase, in conseJuence of the investigations of @apteyn, "yson, and Eddington on the KKsyste!atic !otions of the stars LL This research will, it is hoped, lead to an understanding of the general law governing the !ove!ents of the whole body of stars constituting the visible universe Taking about eleven hundred stars whose proper !otions have been ascertained with an approach to certainty, and which are distributed in all parts of the sky, it has been shown that there e*ists an apparent double drift, in two independent strea!s, !oving in different and nearly opposed directions The ape* of the !otion of what is called KKStrea! $LL is situated, according to Professor @apteyn, in right ascension ORS, declination south --S, which places it just south of the constellation 3rionI while the ape* of KKStrea! $$LL is in right ascension 495S, declination south 6OS, placing it in the constellation 2ra, south of Scorpio The two apices differ very nearly -O5S in right ascension and about -45S in declination The

discovery of these vast starDstrea!s, if they really e*ist, is one of the !ost e*traordinary in !odern astrono!y $t offers the correlation of stellar !ove!ents needed as the basis of a theory of those !ove!ents, but it see!s far fro! revealing a physical cause for the! 2s projected against the celestial sphere the stars for!ing the two opposite strea!s appear inter!ingled, so!e obeying one tendency and so!e the other 2s Professor "yson has said, the hypothesis of this double !ove!ent is of a revolutionary character, and calls for further investigation $ndeed, it see!s at first glance not less surprising than would be the observation that in a snowDstor! the flakes over our heads were divided into two parties and driving across each otherLs course in nearly opposite directions, as if urged by interpenetrating winds But whatever e*planation !ay eventually be found for the !otions of the stars, the knowledge of the e*istence of those !otions !ust always afford a new char! to the conte!plative observer of the heavens, for they i!part a sense of life to the starry syste! that would otherwise be lacking 2 stagnant universe, with every star fi*ed i!!ovably in its place, would not content the i!agination or satisfy our longing for ceaseless activity The !ajestic grandeur of the evolutions of the celestial hosts, the inconceivable vastness of the fields of space in which they are e*ecuted, the countless nu!bers, the i!!easurable distances, the involved convolutions, the flocking and the scattering, the interpenetrating !arches and counter!arches, the strange co!!unity of i!pulsion affecting stars that are wide apart in space and causing the! to traverse the general !ove!ent about the! like aides and despatchDbearers on a battleDfield DD all these arouse an intensity of interest which is heightened by the !ystery behind the! The Passing of the Constellations (ro! a historical and picturesJue point of view, one of the !ost striking results of the !otions of the stars described in the last chapter is their effect upon the for!s of the constellations, which have been watched and ad!ired by !ankind fro! a period so early that the date of their invention is now unknown The constellations are for!ed by chance co!binations of conspicuous stars, like figures in a kaleidoscope, and if our lives were co!!ensurate with the Mons of cos!ic e*istence we should perceive that the kaleidoscope of the heavens was ceaselessly turning and throwing the stars into new sy!!etries Even if the stars stood fast, the !otion of the solar syste! would gradually alter the configurations, as the ele!ents of a landscape dissolve and reco!bine in fresh groupings with the travelerLs progress a!id the! But with the stars the!selves all in !otion at various speeds and in !any directions, the changes occur !ore rapidly 3f course, KKrapidLL is here understood in a relative senseI the wheel of hu!an history to an eye accusto!ed to the !ajestic progression of the universe would appear to revolve with the velocity of a whirling dyna!o 3nly the deliberation of geological !ove!ents can be contrasted with the evolution and devolution of the constellations 2nd yet this secular fluctuation of the constellation figures is not without keen interest for the !editative observer $t is another re!inder of the swift !utability of terrestial affairs To the passing glance, which is all that we can bestow upon these figures, they appear so i!!utable that they have been called into service to for! the !ost lasting records of ancient thought and i!agination that we

possess $n the for!s of the constellations, the !ost beautiful, and, in i!aginative Juality, the finest, !ythology that the world has ever known has been perpetuated %et, in a broad sense, this scroll of hu!an thought i!printed on the heavens is as evanescent as the su!!er clouds 2lthough !ore enduring than parch!ent, to!bs, pyra!ids, and te!ples, it is as far as they fro! truly eterniHing the !e!ory of what !an has fancied and done Before studying the effects that the !otions of the stars have had and will have upon the constellations, it is worth while to consider a little further the i!portance of the stellar pictures as archives of history To e!phasiHe the i!portance of these effects it is only necessary to recall that the constellations register the oldest traditions of our race $n the history of pri!eval religions they are the !ost valuable of docu!ents =eaving out of account for the !o!ent the !ore fa!iliar !ythology of the Greeks, based on so!ething older yet, we !ay refer for illustration to that of the !ysterious Aaya race of 2!erica 2t $Ha!al, in %ucatan, says Ar Stansbury ,agar, is a group of ruins perched, after the Ae*ican and CentralD2!erican plan, on the su!!its of pyra!idal !ounds which !ark the site of an ancient theogonic center of the Aayas ,ere the te!ples all evidently refer to a cult based upon the constellations as sy!bols The figures and the na!es, of course, were not the sa!e as those that we have derived fro! our 2ryan ancestors, but the star groups were the sa!e or nearly so (or instance, the loftiest of the te!ples at $Ha!al was connected with the sign of the constellation known to us as Cancer, !arking the place of the sun at the su!!er solstice, at which period the sun was supposed to descend at noon like a great bird of fire and consu!e the offerings left upon the altar 3ur Scorpio was known to the Aayas as a sign of the KK"eath God LL 3ur =ibra, the KKBalance,LL with which the idea of a divine weighing out of justice has always been connected, see!s to be identical with the Aayan constellation Teoyaotlatohua, with which was associated a te!ple where dwelt the priests whose special business it was to ad!inister justice and to foretell the future by !eans of infor!ation obtained fro! the spirits of the dead 3rion, the KK,unterLL of our celestial !ythology, was a!ong the Aayas a KK'arrior,LL while Sagittarius and others of our constellations were known to the! Bunder different na!es, of courseE, and all were endowed with a religious sy!bolis! 2nd the sa!e star figures, having the sa!e significance, were fa!iliar to the Peruvians, as shown by the te!ples at CuHco Thus the i!agination of ancient 2!erica sought in the constellations sy!bols of the unchanging gods But, in fact, there is no nation and no people that has not recogniHed the constellations, and at one period or another in its history e!ployed the! in so!e sy!bolic or representative capacity 2s handled by the Greeks fro! prehistoric ti!es, the constellation !yths beca!e the very soul of poetry The i!agination of that wonderful race idealiHed the principal star groups so effectively that the figures and traditions thus attached to the! have, for civiliHed !ankind, displaced all others, just as Greek art in its highest for!s stands without parallel and eclipses every rival The +o!ans translated no heroes and heroines of the !ythical period of their history to the sky, and the deified CMsars never entered that lofty co!pany, but the heavens are filled with the early !yths of the Greeks ,erakles nightly resu!es his !ighty labors in the starsI Neus, in the for! of the white KKBull,LL Taurus, bears the fair Europa on his back through the celestial wavesI 2ndro!eda stretches forth her shackled ar!s in the starDge!!ed ether, beseeching aidI and Perseus, in a blaHe of

dia!ond ar!or, revives his heroic deeds a!id sparkling clouds of stellar dust There, too, sits Tueen Cassiopeia in her daHHling chair, while the Great @ing, Cepheus, towers gigantic over the pole Professor %oung has significantly re!arked that a great nu!ber of the constellations are connected in so!e way or other with the 2rgonautic E*pedition DD that strangely fascinating legend of earliest Greek story which has never lost its char! for !ankind $n view of all this, we !ay well congratulate ourselves that the constellations will outlast our ti!e and the ti!e of countless generations to follow usI and yet they are very far fro! being eternal =et us now study so!e of the effects of the stellar !otions upon the! 'e begin with the fa!iliar figure of the KKGreat "ipper LL ,e who has not drunk inspiration fro! its celestial bowl is not yet ad!itted to the circle of 3ly!pus This figure is !ade up of seven conspicuous stars in the constellation >rsa Aajor, the KKGreater Bear LL The handle of the KK"ipperLL corresponds to the tail of the i!aginary KKBear,LL and the bowl lies upon his flank $n fact, the figure of a dipper is so evident and that of a bear so unevident, that to !ost persons the KKGreat "ipperLL is the only part of the constellation that is recogniHable 3f the seven stars !entioned, si* are of nearly eJual brightness, ranking as of the second !agnitude, while the seventh is of only the third !agnitude The difference is very striking, since every increase of one !agnitude involves an increase of twoDandDaDhalf ti!es in brightness There appears to be little doubt that the faint star, which is situated at the junction of the bowl and the handle, is a variable of long period, since three hundred years ago it was as bright as its co!panions But however that !ay be, its relative faintness at the present ti!e interferes but little with the perfection of the KK"ipperLsLL figure $n order the !ore readily to understand the changes which are taking place, it will be well to !ention both the na!es and the Greek letters which are attached to the seven stars Beginning at the star in the upper outer edge of the ri! of the bowl and running in regular order round the botto! and then out to the end of the handle, the na!es and letters are as follows1 "ubhe BUValphaWE, Aerak BUVbetaWE, Phaed BUVga!!aWE, AegreH BUVdeltaWE, 2lioth BUVepsilonWE, AiHar BUVHetaWE, and Benetnasch BUVetaWE AegreH is the faint star already !entioned at the junction of the bowl and handle, and AiHar, in the !iddle of the handle, has a close, nakedDeye co!panion which is na!ed 2lcor The 2rabs called this singular pair of stars KKThe ,orse and +ider LL Aerak and "uhbe are called KKThe Pointers,LL because an i!aginary line drawn northward through the! indicates the Pole Star ?ow it has been found that five of these stars DD viH , Aerak, Phaed, AegreH, 2lioth, and AiHar Bwith its co!radeE DD are !oving with practically the sa!e speed in an easterly direction, while the other two, "ubhe and Benetnasch, are si!ultaneously !oving westward, the !otions of Benetnasch being apparently !ore rapid The conseJuence of these opposed !otions is, of course, that the figure of the KK"ipperLL cannot always have e*isted and will not continue to e*ist $n the acco!panying diagra!s it has been thought interesting to show the relative positions of these seven stars, as seen fro! the point which the earth now occupies, both in the past and in the future 2rrows attached to the stars in the figure representing the present appearance of the KK"ipperLL indicate the directions of the !otions and the distances over which they will carry the stars in a period of about five hundred centuries The ti!e, no doubt, see!s long, but re!e!ber the vast stretch of ages through which the earth has passed,

and then reflect that no reason is apparent why our globe should not continue to be a scene of ani!ation for ten thousand centuries yet to co!e The fact that the little star 2lcor placed so close to AiHar should acco!pany the latter in its flight is not surprising, but that two of the principal stars of the group should be found !oving in a direction directly opposed to that pursued by the other five is surprising in the highest degreeI and it recalls the strange theory of a double drift affecting all the stars, to which attention was called in the preceding chapter $t would appear that Benetnasch and "ubhe belong to one KKcurrent,LL and Aerak, Phaed, AegreH, 2lioth, and AiHar to the other 2s far as is known, the !otion of the seven stars are not shared by the s!aller stars scattered about the!, but on the theory of currents there should be such a co!!unity of !otion, and further investigation !ay reveal it (ro! the KKGreat "ipperLL we turn to a constellation hardly less conspicuous and situated at an eJual distance fro! the pole on the other side DD Cassiopeia This fa!ous starDgroup co!!e!orating the ro!antic Tueen of Ethiopia whose vain boasting of her beauty was punished by the e*posure of her daughter 2ndro!eda to the KKSea Aonster,LL is wellD!arked by five stars which for! an irregular letter KK'LL with its open side toward the pole Three of these stars are usually ranked as of the second !agnitude, and two of the thirdI but to ordinary observation they appear of nearly eJual brightness, and present a very striking picture They !ark out the chair and a part of the figure of the beautiful Jueen Beginning at the rightDhand, or western, end of the KK',LL their Greek letter designations are1 Beta BUVbetaWE, 2lpha BUValphaWE, Ga!!a BUVga!!aWE, "elta BUVdeltaWE, and Epsilon BUVepsilonWE (our of the!, Beta, 2lpha, "elta, and Epsilon are traveling eastwardly at various speeds, while the fifth, Ga!!a, !oves in a westerly direction The !otion of Beta is !ore rapid than that of any of the others $t should be said, however, that no little uncertainty attaches to the esti!ates of the rate of !otion of stars which are not going very rapidly, and different observers often vary considerably in their results $n the beautiful KK?orthern Crown,LL one of the !ost perfect and char!ing of all the figures to be found in the stars, the alternate co!bining and scattering effects of the stellar !otions are shown by co!paring the appearance which the constellation !ust have had five hundred centuries ago with that which it has at present and that which it will have in the future The seven principle stars of the asteris!, for!ing a surprisingly perfect coronet, have !ove!ents in three directions at right angles to one another That in these circu!stances they should ever have arrived at positions giving the! so striking an appearance of definite association is certainly surprisingI fro! its aspect one would have e*pected to find a co!!unity of !ove!ent governing the brilliants of the KKCrown,LL but instead of that we find evidence that they will inevitably drift apart and the beautiful figure will dissolve 2 si!ilar fate awaits such asteris!s as the KK?orthern CrossLL in CygnusI the KKCrowLL BCorvusE, which stands on the back of the great KKSea Serpent,LL ,ydra, and pecks at his scalesI KK<obLs CoffinLL B"elphinusEI the KKGreat SJuare of PegasusLLI the KKTwinsLL BGe!iniEI the beautiful KKSickleLL in =eoI and the e*Juisite group of the ,yades in Taurus $n the case of the ,yades, two controlling !ove!ents are !anifest1 one, affecting five of the stars which for! the wellDknown figure of a letter KK),LL is directed northerlyI the other, which

controls the direction of two stars, has an easterly trend The chief star of the group, 2ldebaran, one of the finest of all stars both for its brilliance and its color, is the !ost affected by the easterly !otion $n ti!e it will drift entirely out of connection with its present neighbors 2lthough the ,yades do not for! so co!pact a group as the Pleiades in the sa!e constellation, yet their appearance of relationship is sufficient to awaken a feeling of surprise over the fact that, as with the stars of the KK"ipper,LL their association is only te!porary or apparent The great figure of 3rion appears to be !ore lasting, not because its stars are physically connected, but because of their great distance, which renders their !ove!ents too deliberate to be e*actly ascertained Two of the greatest of its stars, Betelgeuse and +igel, possess, as far as has been ascertained, no perceptible !otion across the line of sight, but there is a little !ove!ent perceptible in the KKBelt LL 2t the present ti!e this consists of an al!ost perfect straight line, a row of secondD!agnitude stars about eJually spaced and of the !ost striking beauty $n the course of ti!e, however, the two rightDhand stars, Aintaka and 2lnila! Bhow fine are these 2rabic star na!es0E will approach each other and for! a nakedDeye double, but the third, 2lnita, will drift away eastward, so that the KKBeltLL will no longer e*ist (or one !ore e*a!ple, let us go to the southern he!isphere, whose !ost celebrated constellation, the KKSouthern Cross,LL has found a place in all !odern literatures, although it has no clai! to consideration on account of association with ancient legends This !ost attractive asteris!, which has never ceased to fascinate the i!agination of Christendo! since it was first devoutly described by the early e*plorers of the South, is but a passing collocation of brilliant stars %et even in its transfigurations it has been for hundreds of centuries, and will continue to be for hundreds of centuries to co!e, a !ost striking object in the sky 3ur figures show its appearance in three successive phases1 first, as it was fifty thousand years ago Bviewed fro! the earthLs present locationEI second, as it is in our dayI and, third, as it will be an eJual ti!e in the future The nearness of these bright stars to one another DD the length of the longer bea! of the KKCrossLL is only si* degrees DD !akes this group very noticeable, whatever the arrange!ent of its co!ponents !ay be The largest star, at the base of the KKCross,LL is of the first !agnitude, two of the others are of the second !agnitude, and the fourth is of the third 3ther stars, not represented in the figures, increase the effect of a celestial blaHonry, although they do not help the rese!blance to a cross But since the !otion of the solar syste! itself will, in the course of so long a period as fifty thousand years, produce a great change in the perspective of the heavens as seen fro! the earth, by carrying us nearly nineteen trillion !iles fro! our present place, why, it !ay be asked, seek to represent future appearances of the constellations which we could not hope to see, even if we could survive so longP The answer is1 Because these things aid the !ind to for! a picture of the effects of the !obility of the starry universe 3nly by showing the changes fro! so!e definite point of view can we arrive at a due co!prehension of the! The constellations are !ore or less fa!iliar to everybody, so that i!pending changes of their for!s !ust at once strike the eye and the i!agination, and !ake clearer the significance of the !ove!ents of the stars $f the future history of !ankind is to

rese!ble its past and if our race is destined to survive yet a !illion years, then our re!ote descendents will see a KKnew heavensLL if not a KKnew earth,LL and will have to invent novel constellations to perpetuate their legends and !ythologies $f our knowledge of the relative distances of the stars were !ore co!plete, it would be an interesting e*ercise in celestial geo!etry to project the constellations probably visible to the inhabitants of worlds revolving around so!e of the other suns of space 3ur sun is too insignificant for us to think that he can !ake a conspicuous appearance a!ong the!, e*cept, perhaps, in a few cases 2s seen, for instance, fro! the nearest known star, 2lpha Centauri, the sun would appear of the average first !agnitude, and conseJuently fro! that standpoint he !ight be the ge! of so!e little constellation which had no Sirius, or 2rcturus, or )ega to eclipse hi! with its superior splendor But fro! the distance of the vast !ajority of the stars the sun would probably be invisible to the naked eye, and as seen fro! nearer syste!s could only rank as a fifth or si*th !agnitude star, unnoticed and unknown e*cept by the starDcharting astrono!er Conflagrations in the ,eavens Suppose it were possible for the world to take fire and burn up DD as so!e pessi!ists think that it will do when the "ivine wrath shall have sufficiently accu!ulated against it DD nobody out of our own little corner of space would ever be aware of the catastrophe0 'ith all their telescopes, the astrono!ers living in the golden light of 2rcturus or the dia!ond blaHe of Canopus would be unable to detect the least gli!!er of the conflagration that had destroyed the seat of 2da! and his descendents, just as now they are totally ignorant of its e*istence But at least fifteen ti!es in the course of recorded history !en looking out fro! the earth have beheld in the re!ote depths of space great outbursts of fiery light, so!e of the! !ore splendidly lu!inous than anything else in the fir!a!ent e*cept the sun0 $f they were conflagrations, how !any !illion worlds like ours were reJuired to feed their blaHeP $t is probable that KKte!poraryLL or KKnewLL stars, as these wonderful apparitions are called, really are conflagrationsI not in the sense of a bonfire or a burning house or city, but in that of a sudden eruption of inconceivable heat and light, such as would result fro! the stripping off the shell of an encrusted sun or the crashing together of two !ighty orbs flying through space with a hundred ti!es the velocity of the swiftest cannonDshot Te!porary stars are the rarest and !ost erratic of astrono!ical pheno!ena The earliest records relating to the! are not very clear, and we cannot in every instance be certain that it was one of these appearances that the ignorant and superstitious old chroniclers are trying to describe The first te!porary star that we are absolutely sure of appeared in -R/4, and is known as KKTychoLs Star,LL because the celebrated "anish astrono!er Bwhose re!ains, with his goldDandDsilver artificial nose DD !ade necessary by a duel DD still intact, were disinterred and reburied in -.5-E was the first to perceive it in the sky, and the !ost assiduous and successful in his studies of it 2s the first fully accredited representative of its class, this new star !ade its entry upon the scene with beco!ing

Xclat $t is characteristic of these pheno!ena that they burst into view with a!aHing suddenness, and, of course, entirely une*pectedly TychoLs star appeared in the constellation Cassiopeia, near a now wellDknown and !uchDwatched little star na!ed @appa, on the evening of ?ove!ber --, -R/4 The story has often been repeated, but it never loses interest, how Tycho, going ho!e that evening, saw people in the street pointing and staring at the sky directly over their heads, and following the direction of their hands and eyes he was astonished to see, near the Henith, an unknown star of surpassing brilliance $t outshone the planet <upiter, and was therefore far brighter than the first !agnitude There was not another star in the heavens that could be co!pared with it in splendor Tycho was not in all respects free fro! the superstitions of his ti!e DD and who isP DD but he had the true scientific instinct, and i!!ediately he began to study the stranger, and to record with the greatest care every change in its aspect (irst he deter!ined as well as he could with the i!perfect instru!ents of his day, !any of which he hi!self had invented, the precise location of the pheno!ena in the sky Then he followed the changes that it underwent 2t first it brightened until its light eJualed or e*ceeded that of the planet )enus at her brightest, a state!ent which will be appreciated at its full value by anyone who has ever watched )enus when she plays her daHHling rYle of KKEvening Star,LL flaring like an arc light in the sunset sky $t even beca!e so brilliant as to be visible in full daylight, since, its position being circu!polar, it never set in the latitude of ?orthern Europe (inally it began to fade, turning red as it did so, and in Aarch, -R/6, it disappeared fro! TychoLs searching gaHe, and has never been seen again fro! that day to this ?one of the astrono!ers of the ti!e could !ake anything of it They had not yet as !any bases of speculation as we possess today TychoLs star has achieved a ro!antic reputation by being fancifully identified with the KKStar of Bethlehe!,LL said to have led the wondering Aagi fro! their eastern deserts to the cradleD!anger of the Savior in Palestine Aany atte!pts have been !ade to connect this traditional KKstarLL with so!e known pheno!enon of the heavens, and none see!s !ore idle than this %et it persistently survives, and no astrono!er is free fro! eager Juestions about it addressed by people whose i!agination has been e*cited by the legend $t is only necessary to say that the supposition of a connection between the pheno!enon of the Aagi and TychoLs star is without any scientific foundation $t was originally based on an unwarranted assu!ption that the star of Tycho was a variable of long period, appearing once every three hundred and fifteen years, or thereabout $f that were true there would have been an apparition so!ewhere near the traditional date of the birth of Christ, a date which is itself uncertain But even the data on which the assu!ption was based are inconsistent with the theory Certain !onkish records speak of so!ething wonderful appearing in the sky in the years -496 and .6R, and these were taken to have been outbursts of TychoLs star $nvestigation shows that the records !ore probably refer to co!ets, but even if the objects seen were te!porary stars, their dates do not suit the hypothesisI fro! .6R to -496 there is a gap of :-. years, and fro! -496 to -R/4 one of only :5O yearsI !oreover ::/ years have now B-.5.E elapsed since Tycho saw the last gli!!er of his star >pon a variability so irregular and uncertain as that, even if we felt sure that it e*isted, no conclusion could be found concerning an apparition occurring 4555 years ago $n the year -955 Bthe year in which Giordano Bruno was burned at the

stake for teaching that there is !ore than one physical worldE, a te!porary star of the third !agnitude broke out in the constellation Cygnus, and curiously enough, considering the rarity of such pheno!ena, only four years later another surprisingly brilliant one appeared in the constellation 3phiuchus This is often called KK@eplerLs star,LL because the great Ger!an astrono!er devoted to it the sa!e attention that Tycho had given to the earlier pheno!enon $t, too, like TychoLs, was at first the brightest object in the stellar heavens, although it see!s never to have Juite eJualed its fa!ous predecessor in splendor $t disappeared after a year, also turning of a red color as it beca!e !ore faint 'e shall see the significance of this as we go on So!e of @eplerLs conte!poraries suggested that the outburst of this star was due to a !eeting of ato!s in space, and idea bearing a striking rese!blance to the !odern theory of KKastrono!ical collisions LL $n -9/5, -O6O, and -O95 te!porary stars !ade their appearance, but none of the! was of great brilliance $n -O99 one of the second !agnitude broke forth in the KK?orthern CrownLL and awoke !uch interest, because by that ti!e the spectroscope had begun to be e!ployed in studying the co!position of the stars, and ,uggins de!onstrated that the new star consisted largely of incandescent hydrogen But this star, apparently unlike the others !entioned, was not absolutely new Before its outburst it had shown as a star of the ninth !agnitude Bentirely invisible, of course, to the naked eyeE, and after about si* weeks it faded to its original condition in which it has ever since re!ained $n -O/9 a te!porary star appeared in the constellation Cygnus, and attained at one ti!e the brightness of the second !agnitude $ts spectru! and its behavior rese!bled those of its i!!ediate predecessor $n -OOR, astrono!ers were surprised to see a si*thD!agnitude star gli!!ering in the !idst of the haHy cloud of the great 2ndro!eda ?ebula $t soon absolutely disappeared $ts spectru! was re!arkable for being KKcontinuous,LL like that of the nebula itself 2 continuous spectru! is supposed to represent a body, or a !ass, which is either solid or liJuid, or co!posed of gas under great pressure $n <anuary, -O.4, a new star was suddenly seen in the constellation 2uriga $t never rose !uch above the fourth !agnitude, but it showed a peculiar spectru! containing both bright and dark lines of hydrogen But a bewildering surprise was now in storeI the world was to behold at the opening of the twentieth century such a celestial spectacle as had not been on view since the ti!es of Tycho and @epler Before daylight on the !orning of (ebruary 44, -.5-, the +ev "octor 2nderson, of Edinburgh, an a!ateur astrono!er, who had also been the first to see the new star in 2uriga, beheld a strange object in the constellation Perseus not far fro! the celebrated variable star 2lgol ,e recogniHed its character at once, and i!!ediately telegraphed the news, which awoke the startled attention of astrono!ers all over the world 'hen first seen the new star was no brighter than 2lgol Bless than the second !agnitudeE, but within twentyDfour hours it was ablaHe, outshining even the brilliant Capella, and far surpassing the first !agnitude 2t the spot in the sky where it appeared nothing whatever was visible on the night before its co!ing This is known with certainty because a photograph had been !ade of that very region on (ebruary 4-, and this photograph showed everything down to the twelfth !agnitude, but not a trace of the stranger which burst into view between the 4-st and the 44nd like the e*plosion of a rocket

>pon one who knew the stars the apparition of this intruder in a wellDknown constellation had the effect of a sudden invasion The new star was not far west of the Henith in the early evening, and in that position showed to the best advantage To see Capella, the hitherto unchallenged ruler of that Juarter of the sky, abased by co!parison with this stranger of alien aspect, for there was always an unfa!iliar look about the KKnova,LL was decidedly disconcerting $t see!ed to portend the beginning of a revolution in the heavens 3ne could understand what the effect of such an apparition !ust have been in the superstitious ti!es of Tycho The star of Tycho had burst forth on the northern border of the Ailky 'ayI this one was on its southern border, so!e fortyDfive degrees farther east 2strono!ers were wellDprepared this ti!e for the scientific study of the new star, both astrono!ical photography and spectroscopy having been perfected, and the results of their investigations were calculated to increase the wonder with which the pheno!enon was regarded The star re!ained at its brightest only a few daysI then, like a veritable conflagration, it began to languishI and, like the reflection of a dying fire, as it sank it began to glow with the red color of e!bers But its changes were spas!odicI once about every three days it flared up only to die away again "uring these fluctuations its light varied alternately in the ratio of one to si* (inally it took a per!anent downward course, and after a few !onths the naked eye could no longer perceive itI but it re!ained visible with telescopes, gradually fading until it had sunk to the ninth !agnitude Then another astonishing change happened1 in 2ugust photographs taken at the %erkes 3bservatory and at ,eidelberg showed that the KKnovaLL was surrounded by a spiral nebula0 The nebula had not been there before, and no one could doubt that it represented a phase of the sa!e catastrophe that had produced the outburst of the new star 2t one ti!e the star see!ed virtually to have disappeared, as if all its substance had been e*panded into the nebulous cloud, but always there re!ained a stellar nucleus about which the !isty spiral spread wider and ever wider, like a wave e*panding around a center of disturbance The nebula too showed a variability of brightness, and four condensations which for!ed in it see!ed to have a !otion of revolution about the star 2s ti!e went on the nebula continued to e*pand at a rate which was co!puted to be not less than twenty thousand !iles per second0 2nd now the star itself, showing indications of having turned into a nebula, behaved in a !ost erratic !anner, giving rise to the suspicion that it was about to burst out again But this did not occur, and at length it sunk into a state of lethargy fro! which it has to the present ti!e not recovered But the nebulous spiral has disappeared, and the entire pheno!ena as it now B-.5.E e*ists consists of a faint nebulous star of less than the ninth !agnitude The wonderful transfor!ations just described had been forecast in advance of the discovery of the nebulous spiral encircling the star by the spectroscopic study of the latter 2t first there was no suggestion of a nebular constitution, but within a !onth or two characteristic nebular lines began to appear, and in less than si* !onths the whole spectru! had been transfor!ed to the nebular type $n the !ean ti!e the shifting of the spectral lines indicated a co!plication of rapid !otions in several directions si!ultaneously These !otions were esti!ated to a!ount to fro! one hundred to five hundred !iles per second

The hu!an !ind is so constituted that it feels forced to seek an e*planation of so !arvelous a pheno!enon as this, even in the absence of the data needed for a sound conclusion The !ost natural hypothesis, perhaps, is that of a collision Such a catastrophe could certainly happen $t has been shown, for instance, that in infinity of ti!e the earth is sure to be hit by a co!etI in the sa!e way it !ay be asserted that, if no ti!e li!it is fi*ed, the sun is certain to run against so!e obstacle in space, either another star, or a dense !eteor swar!, or one of the dark bodies which there is every reason to believe abound around us The conseJuences of such a collision are easy to foretell, provided that we know the !asses and the velocities of the colliding bodies $n a preceding chapter we have discussed the !otions of the sun and stars, and have seen that they are so swift that an encounter between any two of the! could not but be disastrous But this is not allI for as soon as two stars approached within a few !illion !iles their speed would be enor!ously increased by their reciprocal attractions and, if their !otion was directed radially with respect to their centers, they would co!e together with a crash that would reduce the! both to nebulous clouds $t is true that the chances of such a KKheadDonLL collision are relatively very s!allI two stars approaching each other would !ost probably fall into closed orbits around their co!!on center of gravity $f there were a collision it would !ost likely be a graHing one instead of a direct frontDtoDfront encounter But even a close approach, without any actual collision, would probably prove disastrous, owing to the tidal influence of each of the bodies on the other Suns, in conseJuence of their enor!ous !asses and di!ensions and the peculiarities of their constitution, are e*ceedingly dangerous to one another at close Juarters PropinJuity awakes in the! a !utually destructive tendency Consisting of !atter in the gaseous, or perhaps, in so!e cases, liJuid, state, their tidal pull upon each other if brought close together !ight burst the! asunder, and the photospheric envelope being destroyed the internal incandescent !ass would gush out, bringing fiery death to any planets that were revolving near 'ithout regard to the resulting disturbance of the earthLs orbit, the close approach of a great star to the sun would be in the highest degree perilous to us But this is a danger which !ay properly be regarded as indefinitely re!ote, since, at our present location in space, we are certainly far fro! every star e*cept the sun, and we !ay feel confident that no great invisible body is near, for if there were one we should be aware of its presence fro! the effects of its attraction 2s to dark nebulM which !ay possibly lie in the track that the solar syste! is pursuing at the rate of :/R,555,555 !iles per year, that is another Juestion DD and they, too, could be dangerous0 This brings us directly back to KK?ova Persei,LL for a!ong the !any suggestions offered to e*plain its outburst, as well as those of other te!porary stars, one of the !ost fruitful is that of a collision between a star and a vast invisible nebula Professor Seeliger, of Aunich, first proposed this theory, but it afterward underwent so!e !odifications fro! others Stated in a general for!, the idea is that a huge dark body, perhaps an e*tinguished sun, encountered in its progress through space a widespread flock of s!all !eteors for!ing a dark nebula 2s it plunged into the swar! the friction of the innu!erable collisions with the !eteors heated its surface to incandescence, and being of vast siHe it then beca!e visible to us as a new star Aeanwhile the !otion of the body through the nebula, and its rotation upon itself, set up a gyration in the blaHing at!osphere for!ed around it by the vaporiHed !eteorsI and as this at!osphere

spread wider, under the laws of gyratory !otion a rotation in the opposite direction began in the infla!ed !eteoric cloud outside the central part of the vorte* Thus the spectral lines were caused to show !otion in opposite directions, a part of the incandescent !ass approaching the earth si!ultaneously with the retreat of another part So the curious spectroscopic observations before !entioned were e*plained This theory !ight also account for the appearance of the nebulous spiral first seen so!e si* !onths after the original outburst The seJuent changes in the spectru! of the KKnovaLL are accounted for by this theory on the assu!ption, reasonable enough in itself, that at first the invading body would be enveloped in a vaporiHed at!osphere of relatively slight depth, producing by its absorption the fine dark lines first observedI but that as ti!e went on and the incessant collisions continued, the blaHing at!osphere would beco!e very deep and e*tensive, whereupon the appearance of the spectral lines would change, and bright lines due to the light of the incandescent !eteors surrounding the nucleus at a great distance would take the place of the original dark ones The vorte* of !eteors once for!ed would protect the flying body within fro! further i!!ediate collisions, the latter now occurring !ainly a!ong the !eteors the!selves, and then the central blaHe would die down, and the original splendor of the pheno!enon would fade But the theories about ?ova Persei have been al!ost as nu!erous as the astrono!ers who have speculated about it 3ne of the !ost startling of the! assu!ed that the outburst was caused by the running a!uck of a dark star which had encountered another star surrounded with planets, the renewed outbreaks of light after the principal one had faded being due to the successive running down of the unfortunate planets0 %et another hypothesis is based on what we have already said of the tidal influence that two close approaching suns would have upon each other Supposing two such bodies which had beco!e encrusted, but re!ained incandescent and fluid within, to approach within al!ost striking distanceI they would whirl each other about their co!!on center of gravity, and at the sa!e ti!e their shells would burst under the tidal strain, and their glowing nuclei being disclosed would produce a great outburst of light 2pplying this theory to a KKnova,LL like that of -O99 in the KK?orthern Crown,LL which had been visible as a s!all star before the outbreak, and which afterward resu!ed its for!er aspect, we should have to assu!e that a yet shining sun had been approached by a dark body whose attraction te!porarily burst open its photosphere $t !ight be supposed that in this case the dark body was too far advanced in cooling to suffer the sa!e fate fro! the tidal pull of its victi! But a close approach of that kind would be e*pected to result in the for!ation of a binary syste!, with orbits of great eccentricity, perhaps, and after the lapse of a certain ti!e the outburst should be renewed by another appro*i!ation of the two bodies 2 te!porary star of that kind would rather be ranked as a variable The celebrated (rench astrono!er, <anssen, had a different theory of ?ova Persei, and of te!porary stars in general 2ccording to his idea, such pheno!ena !ight be the result of che!ical changes taking place in a sun without interference by, or collision with, another body <anssen was engaged for !any years in trying to discover evidence of the e*istence of o*ygen in the sun, and he constructed his observatory on the su!!it of Aount Blanc specially to pursue that research ,e believed that o*ygen !ust surely e*ist in the sun since we find so !any other fa!iliar ele!ents included in the constitution of the solar globe, and as he was unable to discover satisfactory evidence of its

presence he assu!ed that it e*isted in a for! unknown on the earth $f it were nor!ally in the sunLs chro!osphere, or coronal at!osphere, he said, it would co!bine with the hydrogen which we know is there and for! an obscuring envelope of water vapor $t e*ists, then, in a special state, unco!bined with hydrogenI but let the te!perature of the sun sink to a critical point and the o*ygen will assu!e its nor!al properties and co!bine with the hydrogen, producing a !ighty outburst of light and heat This, <anssen thought, !ight e*plain the pheno!ena of the te!porary stars $t would also, he suggested, account for their brief career, because the co!bination of the ele!ents would be Juickly acco!plished, and then the resulting water vapor would for! an at!osphere cutting off the radiation fro! the star within This theory !ay be said to have a livelier hu!an interest than so!e of the others, since, according to it, the sun !ay carry in its very constitution a !enace to !ankindI one does not like to think of it being suddenly transfor!ed into a gigantic laboratory for the e*plosive co!bination of o*ygen and hydrogen0 But while <anssenLs theory !ight do for so!e te!porary stars, it is inadeJuate to e*plain all the pheno!ena of ?ova Persei, and particularly the appearance of the great spiral nebula that see!ed to e*hale fro! the heart of the star >pon the whole, the theory of an encounter between a star and a dark nebula see!s best to fit the observations By that hypothesis the e*panding billow of light surrounding the core of the conflagration is very well accounted for, and the spectroscopic peculiarities are also e*plained "r Gustov =e Bon offers a yet !ore alar!ing theory, suggesting that te!porary stars are the result of ato!ic e*plosionI but we shall touch upon this !ore fully in Chapter -6 Twice in the course of this discussion we have called attention to the change of color invariably undergone by te!porary stars in the later stages of their career This was conspicuous with ?ova Persei which glowed !ore and !ore redly as it faded, until the nebulous light began to overpower that of the stellar nucleus ?othing could be !ore suggestive of the dying out of a great fire Aoreover, change of color fro! white to red is characteristic of all variable stars of long period, such as KKAiraLL in Cetus $t is also characteristic of stars believed to be in the later stages of evolution, and conseJuently approaching e*tinction, like 2ntares and Betelgeuse, and still !ore notably certain s!all stars which KKglea! like rubies in the field of the telescope LL These last appear to be suns in the closing period of e*istence as selfDlu!inous bodies Between the white stars, such as Sirius and +igel, and the red stars, such as 2ldebaran and 2lpha ,erculis, there is a progressive series of colors fro! golden yellow through orange to deep red The change is believed to be due to the increase of absorbing vapors in the stellar at!osphere as the body cools down $n the case of ordinary stars these changes no doubt occupy !any !illions of years, which represent the average duration of solar lifeI but the te!porary stars run through si!ilar changes in a few !onths1 they rese!ble ephe!eral insects DD born in the !orning and doo!ed to perish with the going down of the sun E*plosive and 'hirling ?ebulM 3ne of the !ost surprising triu!phs of celestial photography was Professor @eelerLs discovery, in -O.., that the great !ajority of the nebulM have a distinctly spiral for! This for!, previously known in

=ord +osseLs great KK'hirlpool ?ebula,LL had been supposed to be e*ceptionalI now the photographs, far e*celling telescopic views in the revelation of nebular for!s, showed the spiral to be the typical shape $ndeed, it is a Juestion whether all nebulM are not to so!e e*tent spiral The e*tre!e i!portance of this discovery is shown in the effect that it has had upon hitherto prevailing views of solar and planetary evolution (or !ore than threeDJuarters of a century =aplaceLs celebrated hypothesis of the !anner of origin of the solar syste! fro! a rotating and contracting nebula surrounding the sun had guided speculation on that subject, and had been tentatively e*tended to cover the evolution of syste!s in general The apparent for!s of so!e of the nebulM which the telescope had revealed were regarded, and by so!e are still regarded, as giving visual evidence in favor of this theory There is a KKring nebulaLL in =yra with a central star, and a KKplanetary nebulaLL in Ge!ini bearing no little rese!blance to the planet Saturn with its rings, both of which appear to be practical realiHations of =aplaceLs idea, and the elliptical rings surrounding the central condensation of the 2ndro!eda ?ebula !ay be cited for the sa!e kind of proof But since @eelerLs discovery there has been a decided turning away of speculation another way The for! of the spiral nebulM see!s to be entirely inconsistent with the theory of an originally globular or diskDshaped nebula condensing around a sun and throwing or leaving off rings, to be subseJuently shaped into planets So!e astrono!ers, indeed, now reject =aplaceLs hypothesis in toto, preferring to think that even our solar syste! originated fro! a spiral nebula Since the spiral type prevails a!ong the e*isting nebulM, we !ust !ake any !echanical theory of the develop!ent of stars and planetary syste!s fro! the! accord with the reJuire!ents which that for! i!poses 2 glance at the e*traordinary variations upon the spiral which Professor @eelerLs photographs reveal is sufficient to convince one of the difficulty of the task of basing a general theory upon the! $n truth, it is !uch easier to criticiHe =aplaceLs hypothesis than to invent a satisfactory substitute for it $f the spiral nebulM see! to oppose it there are other nebulM which appear to support it, and it !ay be that no one fi*ed theory can account for all the for!s of stellar evolution in the universe 3ur particular planetary syste! !ay have originated very !uch as the great (rench !athe!atician supposed, while others have undergone, or are now undergoing, a different process of develop!ent There is always a too strong tendency to regard an i!portant new discovery and the theories and speculations based upon it as revolutioniHing knowledge, and displacing or overthrowing everything that went before >pon the plea that KK=aplace only !ade a guessLL !ore recent guesses have been driven to e*tre!es and treated by injudicious e*ponents as KKthe solid facts at last LL Before considering !ore recent theories than =aplaceLs, let us see what the nature of the photographic revelations is The vast celestial !aelstro! discovered by =ord +osse in the KK,unting "ogsLL !ay be taken as the leading type of the spiral nebulM, although there are less conspicuous objects of the kind which, perhaps, better illustrate so!e of their peculiarities =ord +osseLs nebula appears far !ore wonderful in the photographs than in his drawings !ade with the aid of his giant reflecting telescope at Parsonstown, for the photographic plate records details that no telescope is capable of showing Suppose we look at the photograph of this object as any person of co!!on sense would look at any great and strange natural pheno!enon 'hat is the first thing that strikes the !indP $t is certainly the appearance of

violent whirling !otion 3ne would say that the whole glowing !ass had been spun about with tre!endous velocity, or that it had been set rotating so rapidly that it had beco!e the victi! of KKcentrifugal force,LL one huge frag!ent having broken loose and started to gyrate off into space Closer inspection shows that in addition to the principal focus there are various s!aller condensations scattered through the !ass These are conspicuous in the spirals So!e of the! are stellar points, and but for the significance of their location we !ight suppose the! to be stars which happen to lie in a line between us and the nebula But when we observe how !any of the! follow !ost faithfully the curves of the spirals we cannot but conclude that they for! an essential part of the pheno!enonI it is not possible to believe that their presence in such situations is !erely fortuitous 3ne of the outer spirals has at least a doHen of these starDlike points strung upon itI so!e of the! sharp, s!all, and distinct, others !ore blurred and nebulous, suggesting different stages of condensation Even the part which see!s to have been flung loose fro! the !ain !ass has, in addition to its central condensation, at least one stellar point glea!ing in the halfDvanished spire attached to it So!e of the !ore distant stars scattered around the KKwhirlpoolLL look as if they too had been shot out of the !ighty vorte*, afterward condensing into un!istakable solar bodies There are at least two curved rows of !inute stars a little beyond the periphery of the lu!inous whirl which clearly follow lines concentric with those of the nebulous spirals Such facts are si!ply du!bfounding for anyone who will bestow sufficient thought upon the!, for these are suns, though they !ay be s!all onesI and what a birth is that for a sun0 =ook now again at the glowing spirals 'e observe that hardly have they left the central !ass before they begin to coagulate $n so!e places they have a KKropyLL aspectI or they are like peascods filled with growing seeds, which eventually will beco!e stars The great focus itself shows a si!ilar tendency, especially around its circu!ference The sense that it i!parts of a tre!endous shattering force at work is overwhel!ing There is probably !ore !atter in that whirling and bursting nebula than would suffice to !ake a hundred solar syste!s0 $t !ust be confessed at once that there is no confir!ation of the =aplacean hypothesis hereI but what hypothesis will fit the factsP There is one which it has been clai!ed does so, but we shall co!e to that later $n the !eanwhile, as a preparation, fi* in the !e!ory the appearance of that second spiral !ass spinning beside its !aster which see!s to have spurned it away (or a second e*a!ple of the spiral nebulM look at the one in the constellation Triangulu! God, how hath the i!agination of puny !an failed to co!prehend Thee0 ,ere is creation through destruction with a vengeance0 The spiral for! of the nebula is un!istakable, but it is half obliterated a!id the tur!oil of flying !asses hurled away on all sides with tornadic fury The focus itself is splitting asunder under the intolerable strain, and in a little while, as ti!e is reckoned in the Cos!os, it will be gyrating into stars 2nd then look at the cyclonic rain of already finished stars whirling round the outskirts of the stor! 3bserve how scores of the! are yet involved in the fading strea!s of the nebulous spiralsI see how they have been thrown into vast loops and curves, of a beauty that half redee!s the terror of the spectacle enclosed within their lines DD like iridescent cirri hovering about the edges of a hurricane 2nd so again are suns born0 =et us turn to the e*Juisite spiral in >rsa AajorI how different its

aspect f