Chapter II: Part 2

Arcturus is a sun of enormous magnitude, estimated all the way from one to six thousand times as great in luminosity as our sun. It is also travelling with great rapidity, its speed, according to some estimates, amounting to two or three hundred miles per second; but most of this is cross-motion with reference to us, its general direction being toward the south-southwest. If it is travelling three hundred miles per second, it would traverse the space between the sun and the nearest star, Alpha Centauri, in about three thousand years. We shall touch on Arcturus again when dealing with Boötes in the next chapter.

Disregarding for the present the exquisite circlet of Corona Borealis, the “Northern Crown,” and the quadrilateral figure in Hercules, seen northeast of Arcturus, we turn to the great dragon, Draco, whose diamond-shaped head may be seen far over in the northeast above sparkling Vega, which is just on the horizon. As a reference to the charts of the circumpolar stars at the end of the book will show, Draco is a remarkably crooked constellation, its line of stars winding round between the “Little Dipper” in Ursa Minor, which has Polaris at the end of its handle, and the “Great Dipper” of Ursa Major. Its most interesting, though not now its brightest, star is Alpha, or _Thuban_, Arabic for “dragon.” It lies between the end of the handle of the Great Dipper and the bowl of the small one. About forty-six hundred years ago Alpha Draconis was the Pole-star, and is believed to have shone down the long tube-like passage in the great pyramid of Cheops into the watching eyes of the priestly astronomers, assembled to view it in the mysterious chamber hollowed out of the solid rock deep under the foundations of the mighty pile. They thus had a telescope more than three hundred feet long as immovable as the solid earth, but, alas for their calculations, the star itself shifted its position, and their gigantic observing tube became useless until modern science inferred from its position the date of their building. How imposing to the imagination this association between a particular star and the mightiest structure made by human hands on the earth! Two centuries ago Thuban was more than twice as bright as it is now, and when the Egyptian priests sedulously observed it from their gloomy cavern, more than a thousand years before the magic-working days of Moses, it may have been brighter still.

Gamma (γ), or Eltanin (the “Dragon”), in the triangular head, is now the brightest star in the constellation, and it, too, has a history. Lockyer and others have identified it as the orientation star of Rameses’ great temple at Karnak, and of the temples of Hathor and Mut at Dendera and Thebes. There is something magnificent in this thought of the ancient temple-builders--to square their work by the stars, and to construct long rows of sphinxes and majestic columns to conduct a ray from the sky to the eye of the god in his dark and hidden chamber, where no impious foot dared follow.

When you are tired of tracing the windings of the Dragon, turn to Ursa Minor and Polaris. The “Little Bear,” it has been remarked, has an even more preposterous tail than his greater brother. Polaris is at the end of the tail, or the end of the handle of the Little Dipper, and the bowl of the latter is on the bear’s flank.

If one knows nothing else of uranography, one should at least know Polaris, the “North Star.” To recognize that star is to be able to orient yourself wherever you may be in the northern hemisphere. A whole volume could be written on its connection with human affairs. For at least two thousand years it has been the cynosure of sailors, and of wanderers by land as well. You cannot be lost if you have Polaris to guide you. The magnetic compass varies and misleads, the sun and the moon change their places, all the other stars circle through the heavens, but Polaris is always there, shining over the pole of the earth, the image of steadfastness. Only the slow Precession of the Equinoxes affects it. At the present time it is within one degree and a quarter of the true pole of the heavens, and it is drawing nearer that point, so that in two hundred years it will be less than half a degree from it--less than the apparent diameter of the moon. The little circle that it daily describes in the sky may be disregarded, for it is hardly noticeable except with instruments; but it is easy to fix the star’s position with considerable accuracy by simple observation. Note that the Great Dipper and the “W”-shaped figure in Cassiopeia are on opposite sides of the pole. When one is above, the other is below; when one is on the east, the other is on the west. Draw an imaginary line from the star Mizar in the Great Dipper to the star Delta (δ) in Cassiopeia and it will pass almost directly through the pole. Polaris is on that line, a degree and a quarter from the pole in the direction of Delta Cassiopeiæ. If the observation is made when Delta is above the pole and Mizar below it, Polaris will be on the meridian, or north and south line, a degree and a quarter above the pole; when Delta is west of the pole and Mizar east of it, Polaris will be a degree and a quarter west of the meridian; when Delta is below the pole and Mizar above it, Polaris will be on the meridian a degree and a quarter below the pole; and, finally, when Delta is east of the pole and Mizar west of it, Polaris will be a degree and a quarter east of the meridian. The intermediate positions you can easily deduce for yourself.

But Polaris will not continue to be the unerring guide to the north that it now is. The Precession of the Equinoxes is carrying the pole progressively westward in right ascension, so that Polaris will eventually be left far behind. But the motion of the pole is in a circle about twenty-three and a half degrees in radius, and it requires about 25,800 years to complete a revolution round this circle. Consequently, at the end of that period, Polaris will have come back to reign again as the North Star for many centuries. In the interim other stars will have occupied its place. About 11,500 years from now the brilliant Vega, or Alpha Lyræ, will be the North Star, and in about 21,000 years Alpha Draconis (Thuban) will once more shine down the great northward-pointing passage in the pyramid of Cheops, if that pyramid shall still exist.

Polaris, unlike some of the others stars that we have been looking at, is running away into space instead of approaching us, at a speed which has been estimated at about 1,380,000 miles per day. Its present distance is not less than 200,000,000,000,000 miles. It has an invisible companion with which it circles in an orbit of a few million miles diameter in a period of about four days.

Polaris is also a celebrated visual double. With a telescope of two or three inches aperture you can see close by its flaming rays a minute blue star, a delicately beautiful sight. In the older days of telescopes, before they had attained the perfection which improvements in glass-making and lens-shaping have rendered possible, this little companion star of Polaris was a universal test of excellence. Its prestige was historical. The amateur owner of a telescope who could see that star clearly felt a joy that he could hardly express. The old makers of object-glasses, by rule of thumb, always tried them on the companion of the Polestar as a standard test for small apertures. The small star is of the ninth magnitude, and situated about 18″.6 from its primary.

The stars Beta (β), or Kochab (the “Star”), and Gamma (γ), in Ursa Minor, are called the Wardens, or Guards, of the Pole. In low northern latitudes, where these stars sweep the horizon at their lower culmination, Shakespeare’s description in _Othello_ would be literally true during a great storm at sea:

“The wind-shak’d surge, with high and monstrous mane,
Seems to cast water on the burning Bear
And quench the guards of th’ ever-fixed pole.”

The constellations Cepheus, Cassiopeia, and Perseus, now low in the northwest and north, we leave for description to another chapter.

II

THE EVENING SKY AT THE SUMMER SOLSTICE

At 10 o’clock P.M. on the 21st of June, the longest day of the northern hemisphere, the aspect of the sky is that shown in Chart II, accompanying this chapter. The same chart will answer for 11 P.M. on the 5th or 6th of June; 9 P.M. on the 7th of July, and 8 P.M. on the 22d or 23d of July. In fact, for any of the hours mentioned the date may be shifted several days forward or backward without seriously affecting the comparison of the chart with the sky, and the same may be said of each of the other circular charts. The stars simply rise about four minutes earlier each evening, and four minutes of time correspond to one degree of space measured on the face of the sky. So the whole sky shifts about one degree westward every twenty-four hours.

For the observation of the heavens at the epoch of the Summer Solstice, observers who are situated at least as far south as 40° north latitude have an advantage over those whose place on the earth is much farther north, because in the more northern regions sunset occurs later, and in England and Northern Europe the day, at this time, may exceed sixteen hours in length, while twilight is perceptible throughout the night. This interferes with the brilliancy of the stars.

At no other season do the heavenly bodies seem so intimately associated with the earth as in summer. All nature is now attuned, and the stars glow softly in the tepid atmosphere, stirred by faint breezes, like veritable flowers of the sky. The firmament becomes a vast garden lit with beautiful lamps, which seem to have been placed there to dimly illuminate nocturnal wanderers in the transparent gloom beneath. Their beauty is as refreshing as the cooling breath of night itself. A mystic influence steals from them over the earth.

“If a man would be alone,” says Emerson, “let him look at the stars.”

Yet he cannot be alone with them; they are too friendly; they speak too plainly a universal language, which, though he cannot translate it, he _feels_ in every fibre. There is nothing more absolutely common to all men than the influence of the stars. No one ever gazed up at them without feeling a change come over his spirit. Truly, “they separate between him and what he touches.” They free him from the bondage of time and space. There is no trouble that they cannot assuage. And there is no time like the summer for becoming intimate with them. One who has been touched by the magic of their love could lie all the night long on a bed of pine-needles and fill his soul with their beauty. The march of red Antares and his glittering retinue across the meridian while the earth sleeps in solstitial calm--who can describe that pageant?

Antares is _the_ summer star, and with it and the Scorpion we will begin. Not so bright as Arcturus or Vega, which are now high aloft, it has a charm peculiar to itself, arising partly from its fervid color, partly from its surroundings, and partly from its position, not too high above the southern horizon, which renders observation of the star comparatively easy. The color is so distinctive that one might think that he could recognize Antares chromatically if it were suddenly transported to some other region of the sky and placed amid a strange environment. Sometimes a flash of its fiery rays, striking sidewise into the eye as one is looking elsewhere, startles the observer like a red meteor. It is well named Antares--“Anti-Mars.” With the telescope the wonder of color is increased, for close by the great star the glass reveals a smaller one of a _vivid green_, an all but incredible combination of complementarily tinted suns. And these suns are undoubtedly actually linked together into a system, so that, if there are planets revolving around both or either, the inhabitants of those planets may behold the spectacle of two suns, one crimson and the other emerald! The large star is of the first magnitude, and the small one of the seventh; angular distance 3″.7.

The companion of Antares is historically associated with the most interesting of American astronomers, a man whose life was a romance, Gen. O. M. Mitchel. When his long-cherished design of setting up a great telescope in America was at last fulfilled, at Cincinnati, in 1845, one of his first achievements was the discovery, to the surprise of the astronomers of Europe, of the green star hiding in the rays of Antares. At times it has been seen emerging from behind the moon, after an occultation, ahead of its red comrade.

With a parallax of 0″.02, Newcomb estimated the luminosity of Antares at nine hundred times that of our sun, and yet the spectroscope indicates that it is a dying sun, fast approaching extinction. In its younger days it may have been an orb of prodigious splendor.

The constellation Scorpio, of which Antares is the leader, is one of the best marked in the sky. The two small stars Sigma (σ) and Tau (τ), standing like attendants on either side of Antares, lend a singular aspect to the central part of the constellation. Antares is usually represented as the heart of the imaginary scorpion. Below Tau a curving row of stars dips to the southern horizon, and then rises, farther eastward, terminating with a conspicuous pair in the uplifted sting. West of Antares a nearly vertical row represents the head. Of the stars in this row, Beta (β) is interesting as a fine and easily seen double, the distance being about 13″. A higher magnifying power shows that the larger star has another faint companion, distant only 0″.7. Nu (ν) is also telescopically interesting, for it consists of two pairs of stars. Observe in Chart VII the strange way in which the outlines of the constellation have been swung into loops in order to include certain stars in Scorpio, recalling the crooked boundary between Switzerland and Italy, by which each reserves particular peaks of the Alps for itself.

East of Scorpio, where the Milky Way, falling in flakes and sheets of silvery splendor upon the southeastern horizon, spreads abroad like an overflowing river, lies Sagittarius, the “Archer,” often represented in the old pictorial charts as a centaur. The stars Lambda (λ), Delta (δ), and Epsilon (ε) form the bent bow. But modern eyes recognize more easily a dipper, formed by the stars Zeta (ζ), Tau (τ), Sigma (σ), Phi (φ), Lambda (λ), and Mu (μ). But the star-clusters in Sagittarius are more interesting than the separate stars. A little southwest of Mu is the famous cluster 8 M., of which Barnard has made a photograph that is amazing beyond all description. Other clusters are all about in this part of the sky. A good opera-glass or field-glass is almost indispensable for one who would enjoy the glory of this wondrous region. Its riches are almost oppressive in their lavish abundance. Here one can have handfuls of stars for the picking up, like sands of gold from the bed of Pactolus. As the glittering incrustations that cover the roofs and walls of the Mammoth Cave are often compared to the starry heavens, so, reversing the image, Sagittarius is like a stupendous cavern of space all ablaze and aglitter with millions of sparkling gems.

Above Scorpio and Sagittarius are the intertwined constellations of Ophiuchus and Serpens. He who may wish to disentangle them is referred to _Astronomy with the Naked Eye_. But the outlines can be traced in Chart VII. The head of Serpens, like those of Hydra and Draco, is plainly marked by a striking group of stars, in this case resembling the figure called a “quincunx.” From this point just under the “Northern Crown,” the serpent’s stars wind downward in beautiful pairs and groups, crossing the meridian above Scorpio, and rising again in the eastern part of the sky, above the little constellation of Sobieski’s Shield, until they meet the borders of Aquila. Ophiuchus, with his head high up toward Hercules, where it is marked by the brightest star in that part of the sky, Alpha Ophiuchi, or Ras Alhague, the “Head of the Serpent Charmer,” stands with legs braced wide apart, grasping the serpent at the points marked by the stars Delta (δ) and Epsilon (ε), and Tau (τ) and Nu (ν). It is Esculapius with his Serpent, said the Greeks; it is St. Paul and the Viper of Melita, or Moses and the Brazen Serpent, we don’t know which, said the churchmen. I am not aware that in England they have ever been tempted to call it St. George and the Dragon. Politics and national pride have not meddled much with the stars, although there was once an attempt to fix the name of Napoleon upon Orion. Ras Alhague is described by R. H. Allen as sapphire in hue, while Alpha Serpentis is yellowish. The star Lambda (λ) in Ophiuchus, also called Marfik, the “Elbow,” is a beautiful binary, period 235 years, distance apart 1″.2. The smaller star is smalt blue, a splendid telescopic object.

But, as in the case of Sagittarius, the greater wonders here are in the form of star-clusters, and particularly nebulæ. Just above Antares, in one of the feet of Ophiuchus, is a small star, Rho (to find which the reader must consult a large star atlas, like Klein’s), around which Barnard has discovered, by photography, a truly marvellous nebula, a nebula which appears _to obscure the stars_ like a cloud of cosmic dust. Great black lanes extend from and around it, and even the luminous parts of the nebula seem to absorb the light of the stars behind, diminishing their brightness a whole magnitude or more where they are veiled by it. This entire region of sky is most strange to the photographic eye. An outlier of the nebula just mentioned surrounds the star Nu (ν) in Scorpio, and its veiling effect upon the stars is even more evident. There is a similar appearance around the star Theta (θ) Ophiuchi, not far away. The sense of some appalling mystery in this part of the firmament is heightened by what Barnard says of a thing which has reappeared again and again on his photographs during the past fifteen years, at a point which he describes as lying very closely to R. A. xviii hours, 25 m., 31 s.; Decl. S. 26°, 9′ (near the star Lambda (λ) in Sagittarius).

“It is a small, black hole in the sky. It is round and sharply defined. Its measured diameter on the negative is 2′.6. On account of its sharpness and smallness and its isolation, this is perhaps the most remarkable of all the black holes with which I am acquainted. It lies in an ordinary part of the Milky Way, and is not due to the presence or absence of stars, but seems really to be a marking on the sky itself” (_Astrophysical Journal_, January, 1910).

These things really transcend explanation (see _Curiosities of the Sky_).

Above Ophiuchus and his Serpent, almost exactly overhead in the latitude of 40° N., we see the quadrilateral figure marked out by four of the principal stars of the constellation Hercules. The head of Draco, described in Chapter I, is beyond it toward the north-northeast. Hercules stands feet upward in the sky, his head, indicated by the star Alpha, or Ras Algethi, the “Kneeler’s Head,” being situated a few degrees west-northwest of Ras Alhague. Thus the two giants have their heads together. But while the occupation of Ophiuchus is plain, nobody, not even in ancient times, when the constellation received its name, has ever been able to say what Hercules is laboring at. When he was on the earth everybody followed his deeds and understood, if they could not emulate, them. He was as comprehensible as a modern pugilist. Now, however, that he has been translated to the stars, his labors are of a more mysterious nature, and, judging from his attitude, he finds them harder than any he undertook for the benefit of mankind here below. One is tempted to think that the powers he offended, when he boldly entered the land of shades and snatched the wife of his friend, King Admetus, from the hand of Death himself, are now taking an ample vengeance.

Ras Algethi is a very beautiful double star, one red, the other green or blue, and both, strangely enough, are variable in brightness. Their distance apart is 4″.7. Their spectrum indicates that they are advanced toward extinction many stages beyond our sun.

The star Zeta (ζ), one of those in the quadrilateral, is a closer double, distance about 1″, and is binary, the period of revolution being about thirty-five years.

And now for a great marvel. Let the eye range slowly from Eta (η) directly toward Zeta (ζ). When one-third of the distance between the two stars has been passed, a faint, glimmering speck will be perceived. Perhaps you will need an opera-glass to make sure that you see it. This is the “Great Cluster in Hercules.” You must go to the southern hemisphere to find its match anywhere in the sky. It is a ball of suns! Now you need a telescope. You _must have one_. You must either buy or borrow it, or you must pay a visit to an observatory, for this is a thing that no intelligent human being in these days can afford not to see. Can it be possible that any man can know that fifteen thousand suns are to be seen, burning in a compact globular cluster, and not long to regard them with his own eyes? Of what use is description in such a case? The language has not yet been invented to depict such things. Human speech comes down to us from the times when men did not need the tongue of the gods to tell what they saw. When Galileo invented the telescope, and Herschel multiplied its powers a thousandfold, they should have found a language fitted to describe their discoveries. But if you cannot get a look at the Hercules cluster through a powerful telescope, photography comes to your aid. Look at one of the wonderful Lick or Yerkes photographs of it, and pause long on what you see. Note the crowding of those suns toward the centre, note the glittering spiral lines formed by those which seem streaming and hurrying from all sides to join the marvellous congregation--and then turn again to that faint speck in the sky, which is all that the naked eye reveals of the wonder, and reflect upon the meaning of space and the universe.

We now turn farther east, still keeping the eyes directed high in the sky, and just at the edge of the Milky Way, with two minute stars making a little triangle with it, we see Vega or Alpha Lyræ, the astonishing brilliant that flashes on the strings of the heavenly Lyre. At the Vernal Equinox it was just rising far over in the northeast; now it is the unquestioned queen of that quarter of the sky. I like to think of Emerson when looking at that star. There is a sentence of his which reflects it like a mirror. When he strove to rouse the “sluggard intellect of this continent,” to “look from under its iron lids,” he could find no stronger image than that of poetry reviving here and leading in a new age, “as the star in the constellation Harp, which now flames in our zenith, astronomers announce, shall one day be the Pole-star for a thousand years.”

Of the effect of the Precession of the Equinoxes, to which Emerson refers, we have already spoken. But it is a long time in the future that Vega will begin, or rather resume, its reign as the Star of the North. And, curiously enough, when that time comes the northern hemisphere will have its Summer Solstice when the sun is just opposite to the place which it now occupies at that season, and when Antares will be no more a summer star, but will flash its ruddy light upon the snows of a winter longer and colder than the winters that we know, while Orion will blaze above the summer landscapes. This immense revolution, some have thought, may be the measure of the “Great Year” of Plato, and if the chronology adopted for dating the early remains of civilization recently uncovered in Crete is correct, we have evidence that mankind has persisted through one of these vast periods, and that nations flourished round the Mediterranean when Vega was formerly the Pole-star.

The beauty of Vega, which has been admired and commented on from the earliest times, is much enhanced when it is viewed with a telescope. Then the blueness of its light becomes evident, and one is the more astonished at the unquestionable fact that it outshines the sun a hundred times. A _sapphire_ sun, a hundred times more brilliant than ours! The proper motion of the solar system, which carries us through space about twelve miles per second, is bearing us almost directly toward Vega, so that as future ages unroll the star should become brighter and brighter with decrease of distance, until eventually it may outshine every other orb in the firmament, and put Sirius himself to shame by its overpowering splendor.

The little star Epsilon (ε), the northernmost one of the pair near Vega, is a celebrated quadruple, easily seen as such with a telescope of moderate power.

A little less than half way from Beta (β) to Gamma (γ) the telescope discovers the wonderful “Ring Nebula,” a delicate circle of nebulous light with a star in the centre. This star is more conspicuous in photographs than in telescopic views. This object has been regarded as a visual proof of the correctness of Laplace’s theory of the origin of the solar system from nebulous rings surrounding a central sun, but the Lick photographs show that the ring in this case is of a strangely complex constitution. Beta is both a binary and a variable star.

Buried in the Milky Way, east of Lyra, lies the great “Northern Cross” in the constellation Cygnus. It is more perfect than the famous “Southern Cross,” and much larger. The star Alpha (α), at the head of the main beam of the cross, is also called _Denib_, the “Tail,” as it is situated in the tail of the “Swan,” Cygnus. Its parallax is undetermined, and Newcomb placed it in his “XM” class, described under Spica in Chapter I. The Milky Way is exceedingly beautiful in Cygnus. Note particularly the broad gaps and rifts in it. Around and above the head of the cross there are dark spaces, which are specially impressive when the eyes are partly averted from them. Downward from Cygnus the stream of the galaxy is seen to be partially split longitudinally. It resembles a broad river meandering, in the droughts of the “dog days,” over flats and shallows, and interrupted with long sand-bars. How can stars have been thrown together into such forms? What whirls and eddies of the ether can have made these _pools of shining suns_?

The star in the foot of the cross, Beta (β), or _Albireo_--a beautiful name without signification, since Allen shows that it originated in a blunder (see his _Star Names and Their Meanings_)--is one of the most attractive objects in the heavens for those who are fortunate enough to possess a telescope. The smallest glass easily shows it to be double, and the combination is unrivalled for beauty, the larger star being a pale topaz and the smaller a deep sapphire. Their magnitudes are three and seven, and their distance apart about 34″. I have separated them with a field-glass.

Cygnus contains one of the nearest stars in the sky, a twinkler not too easily seen with the naked eye--a striking proof of the fact that the mere faintness of a star is in itself no indication of excessive distance. This is known as 61 Cygni, and will be found on Chart X. It is a double, possible binary, easily separated with a small telescope, the distance being about 21″. The distance of 61 Cygni is about 40,000,000,000,000 miles. It was long known as the second nearest star in the sky, the nearest being Alpha Centauri in the southern hemisphere; but at least one nearer one has more lately been discovered, and it, too, is a very small star. The combined luminosity of the two stars in 61 Cygni is only one-tenth that of the sun. Amid so many giants it is reassuring to find a sun smaller than ours; it restores our self-esteem to find that our solar hamlet is not the very least in the empire of space.

Southeast of Cygnus, near the eastern shore of the starry river, is Aquila, the “Eagle.” Its chief star, Altair, “Eagle,” recalls Antares, not by its color, for it is not red but white, but by the singular arrangement of two small stars standing one on either side of it. Here, too, the Milky Way is very splendid, attaining astonishing brightness lower down, in Scutum Sobieskii, “Sobieski’s Shield.” The naming of this constellation was a posthumous reward to the heroic king, John Sobieski, for saving Europe by the defeat of the Turks under the walls of Vienna, after their victorious advance from Constantinople, emphasized in the public mind by the appearance of Halley’s Comet, had seemed to threaten a Moslem conquest. Twice Halley’s Comet had alarmed Europe in connection with the Turks, first in 1456, after they had taken Constantinople, and again in 1682 when they swept upon Vienna, so that it was a natural thought to associate Sobieski’s victory with some “sign in the sky,” and a more appropriate one could hardly have been found than the “shield,” bossed with star-clusters, which Hevelius selected for the purpose. The southern part of the constellation Aquila is sometimes called Antinous. For the beautiful Oriental legend of the Spinning Damsel and the Magpie Bridge connected with Aquila and Lyra, see _Astronomy with the Naked Eye_. Newcomb gives Altair ten times the luminosity of the sun.

The constellations Delphinus and Anser et Vulpecula will be dealt with in the next chapter. In the mean time let us turn to the western half of the sky.

Just west of the meridian, near the zenith, gleams the glorious Northern Crown, Corona Borealis. The head of Serpens is right underneath it. It is, perhaps, the most charming of all asterisms. It could hardly be called anything else than a crown or a wreath. The perfection of the figure is surprising. If its stars were larger it would be the cynosure of the sky, but small as they are they produce an effect of ensemble that could not have been exceeded if human hands had arranged them there. The superior brightness of one of them, Alpha “Gemma,” or “The Pearl,” adds greatly to the effectiveness of the combination. It is the work of a master jeweller! Yet, as I have elsewhere shown, this curious assemblage of stars is but a passing phenomenon, for they are travelling in various directions, with various speeds, and in the course of time the Northern Crown will dissolve like a figure in the clouds. In Greek mythology it was generally called the Crown of Ariadne. Just under the star Epsilon (ε) is a wonderful variable, which in 1866 suddenly blazed up to the second magnitude, and was for a time regarded as a new star. Nothing is known of its periods of change. It is not now visible to the naked eye.

West of Corona the most conspicuous object is Arcturus in Boötes. This entire constellation is now well placed for observation. But first a few words about Arcturus, a star of which one can never tire, so steeped is it in the poetry and history of the most interesting nations of the past. Like Alpha Centauri, Arcturus was used as a “temple star” in both Egypt and Greece, and it was of much importance as a prognosticator of the seasons. When a conspicuous star was seen rising just ahead of the sun, it was said to rise heliacally, and it served as a sentinel to announce the oncoming day. To the priests this was important, because it warned them of the moment when it was necessary to begin their preparations for the sunrise ceremonies in the temples. To the husbandman such a herald seemed specially connected with the particular season in which it appeared. In this way Arcturus came to give its name to the ancient Greek autumn. In Sophocles’ _Œdipus the King_ there is a passage which affords striking evidence of the popular knowledge of Arcturus in this connection. When the herdsman from Mount Cithæron is brought to prove that he had nurtured Œdipus as a child, one of his former comrades, to recall the old man’s recollections, reminds him that they had kept their flocks together “three whole half-years from Spring to Arcturus” (meaning from Spring to Autumn, since Arcturus then rose heliacally at the beginning of September). Whatever might be the local names for Autumn, over all the Greek world it was popularly known as the “time of Arcturus.”

Although the Revised Version has struck out Arcturus and substituted “the Bear” in that famous passage in which the Almighty answers Job “out of the whirlwind,” yet for lovers of the Bible this will always be “Job’s Star,” always surrounded to the imagination with the momentous circumstances suggested by that tremendous and unanswerable demand:

“Canst _thou_ call forth _Arcturus_ and his sons?”

No scientific fact known about it--not its gigantic size, not its inexplicable flight through space--can be so imposing as the impressions conveyed in its choice by Jehovah to illustrate His illimitable power. One likes to think that the Hebrew poet really did mean to write “Arcturus,” for there is something sublime in the idea of representing the Great Maker of All as calling one of His stars by name.

Arcturus is sometimes referred to under the name of _Arctophilax_, the “Bear-driver,” a name properly belonging to the constellation Boötes. In modern astronomical history it will always be memorable for the passage over it of the celebrated Comet of 1858, Donati’s Comet. At one time the star was almost involved in the head of the great comet, and yet it shone through the obstructing vapors with virtually undiminished lustre. It was a spectacle, said Professor Nichol, the like of which no one might see again though he should spend on earth fifty lives. At the beginning the comet was a little plume of fire, “shaped like a bird of paradise,” but it soon brightened into a stupendous scimetar, brandished in the sunset, and when it swept over Arcturus the whole astronomical world was watching to see what would happen to the star.

Among the other stars of Boötes, Epsilon (ε) is specially worthy of notice, being a remarkable binary of finely contrasted colors, orange and sea-green. The distance is 2″.25, and the period of revolution long but undetermined. Struve called this star “Pulcherrima,” on account of its exceeding beauty.

Although Arcturus by its splendor belittles the rest of the constellation, yet it requires no difficult exercise of the imagination to see a giant form there, towering behind the Bear, and urging on his dogs in the chase. The dogs are represented by Canes Venatici, of the beauty of whose chief star, Cor Caroli, I have spoken in the preceding chapter. In the upper part of Canes Venatici, about 3° southwest of Benetnasch, is the celebrated “Whirlpool Nebula” of Lord Rosse, which modern photographs show in a form so suggestive of tremendous disruptive forces that cosmogonists are at a loss to explain it.

We now drop down to Libra, the “Balance,” which lies just west of Scorpio and east of Virgo. There is evidence that this constellation originally represented the outstretched claws of the Scorpion. Yet as an independent constellation it is very ancient. It has only two stars of any considerable magnitude, Alpha (α) and Beta (β). The former must have faded, for it is now the fainter. It lies almost on the ecliptic. These stars are interesting on account of their curious names, which themselves tend to prove that Libra once formed a part of Scorpio. Alpha is Zubenelgenubi, the “Southern Claw,” and Beta Zubeneschemali, the “Northern Claw.” These titles, as Allen shows, have been derived through the Arabic from the Greek names current in the time of Ptolemy. The first is yellowish-white, and the second pale green. Any good eye detects the difference of color at a glance, although the stars are about ten degrees apart. Zubenelgenubi is widely double, separable with an opera-glass.

Along the western horizon we recognize our old friends Virgo, Corvus, and Leo, while high in the northwest is Ursa Major, head downward, and directly in the north Ursa Minor, standing on the end of his tail, poised like an acrobat on Polaris. The head of Draco shows finely east of the meridian, and low down in the northeast is the “Laconian Key” of Cassiopeia. But that is for another evening.

III

THE EVENING SKY AT THE AUTUMNAL EQUINOX

“When descends on the Atlantic
The gigantic
Storm-wind of the Equinox,
Landward in his wrath he scourges
The toiling surges,
Laden with sea-weed from the rocks.”

Longfellow’s vivid lines reproduce the popular impression of the character of the season when the descending sun again touches the equator, giving the whole world once more days and nights of equal length, before he dips to the south and leaves the northern hemisphere to face the oncoming blasts of winter. There is no superstition more deeply planted than that of the “equinoctial storms.” There _are_ such storms, it is true, but they by no means always burst at the epoch of the Equinox. The readjustment of atmospheric conditions goes on gradually, and there is often, just at the equinoctial moment, a spell of serene weather that can hardly be matched at any other season of the year. The atmosphere, recovered from the excessive heats of summer, possesses a quality of softness and “misty fruitfulness” that tranquillizes the spirit and makes nature doubly charming. It is the late afternoon of the year, when life, refreshed by the siestas of summer, resumes its activity, and the heavens no less than the face of the earth greet the eye with a smile of divine beauty.

To every season its flowers--and to every season its stars. The gardens of the sky are not the same in autumn as in summer, either in their arrangement or in the peculiarities of their bloom. There is less parade of flaming beauty, but the richness of the _coup d’œil_ is not inferior. And just as in our September parterres some of the summer beauties remain, though a little faded, to support with their charms their stately successors, so in the skies of autumn a few of the summer stars are yet seen, though somewhat robbed of their pristine splendor as they sink toward the sunset. The garland of the Milky Way has now been flung all across the firmament, from northeast to southwest, and while Vega and Altair hang half-way down the curtain of the west, recalling the glories of the solstice, Capella appears rising in the northeast, and Cassiopeia, not less beautiful in the sky than when she awoke the jealousy of the sea-nymphs, is seen seated in her “shiny chair” east of the meridian in the north. Between Cassiopeia and Capella flashes Perseus, with his uplifted sword marked by a curve of stars embedded in the Milky Way, and above Perseus stands Andromeda, upright, with her feet toward her rescuer and her head touching the “Great Square of Pegasus,” near the middle of the sky, east of the meridian. Cepheus, the King, is on the meridian above the pole. Cassiopeia, Cepheus, Andromeda, and Perseus constitute the “Royal Family” of the sky, more enduring than the proud dynasties that by turns have ruled terrestrial affairs.

Low down in the south, east of the meridian, glows Fomalhaut, the “Fish’s Mouth,” the leading and the only bright star of Piscis Austrinus, the “Southern Fish.” With this singular star we may begin our description of the beauties of the autumn sky. Fomalhaut well deserves the epithet singular, if for nothing else than on account of its loneliness. In this respect it is more remarkable than Cor Hydræ, which it resembles in its ruddy color. Fomalhaut is the characteristic star of autumn in our latitudes, for the same reasons that cause Antares to represent the summer. Like Antares, it startles the wandering eye and fixes the attention, although, unlike the great star of Scorpio, it has no brilliant _entourage_ to emphasize its supremacy over the quarter of the sky where it shines. It is one of the sailors’ stars. To me Fomalhaut is full of boyhood memories and impressions gained when I learned the stars in the country, among the hills that shut in the Schoharie before it pours out into the valley of the Mohawk. Fortunately, Thomas Dick’s works and Burritt’s _Geography of the Heavens_ had a place in our house, and neither _The Arabian Nights_ nor _The Swiss Family Robinson_ was able to dull my appetite for them. In the course of time I knew all the great stars by name, and found a wonderful pleasure in their acquaintance, although at times they daunted me with their imposing associations with Egypt, the Nile, Babylonia, and everything that is most ancient. I shall never forget Fomalhaut flashing along in the south, just skipping the hilltops on an autumn night. A great star is never so imposing nor so mysterious as when it thus appears to be watching the earth.

How immensely would the interest of many travellers’ tales be heightened if only they had known the names of the stars whose appearance they have recorded. When you have the name of the star that was seen, the season and the hour of the night are fixed at once, and the whole scene is filled with new life. When an Alpine climber, waiting in his lonely camp high on the mountain-side for the coming of day, tells me, “I saw Sirius glancing at us over a lofty peak far in the east,” I know immediately the approximate time of night and the aspect of the heavens, and the narrative gains in vividness; but if he says merely that he saw “a star” his stroke of description misses. And, then, the names of many of the stars, by their oddity and beauty, enrich the page and awake the imagination. They are, in themselves, an incantation.

The lover of the stars is grateful for any reference to them by a great writer, and yet he is often disappointed by the inadequacy of descriptions that might easily have been made memorable if only their authors had known the starry heavens a little better. How disappointing, for instance, is this passage in R. H. Dana’s _Two Years before the Mast_:

“Wednesday, November 5th--The weather was fine during the previous night, and we had a clear view of the Magellan Clouds and of the Southern Cross. The Magellan Clouds consist of three small nebulæ in the southern part of the heavens--two bright, like the Milky Way, and one dark. They are first seen just above the horizon after crossing the southern tropic. When off Cape Horn they are nearly overhead. The Cross is composed of four stars in that form, and it is said to be the brightest constellation in the heavens.”

That is all, and the reader’s dissatisfaction is not confined to the evidence of the writer’s lack of familiarity with the stars, but becomes yet keener when he reflects upon the brilliant picture which Mr. Dana’s powers of description should have enabled him to make of those strange sights of the southern sky, which, in his day, were so rarely seen by northern eyes.

On the equator above Fomalhaut, and close to the meridian, appears a curious group of stars in the form of a letter Y. They mark the hand and urn of Aquarius, the “Waterman.” A few degrees westward from this figure shines the Alpha (α) of the constellation, bearing the strange name Sadalmelik, the “King’s Luck,” or “Lucky One.” It is situated in the Waterman’s right shoulder, while Beta (β), some twelve degrees farther west, marks the left shoulder. Beta’s distinctive name is Sadalsuud, the “Luckiest of the Lucky.” Several other stars in this constellation have names implying good-fortune. The Arabs saw the Y-shaped figure, already referred to, as a tent, and the star Gamma (γ) in this group is called Sadachbiah, from an Arabic phrase which Professor Whitney translates “Felicity of Tents.” Upon this R. H. Allen remarks that the star probably got its name from the fact that it rose with its companions in the morning twilight of spring, “when, after the winter’s want and suffering, the nomads’ tents were raised on the freshening pastures, and the pleasant weather set in.” The star Zeta (ζ), in this same figure, is a long-period binary, probably 750 years, and a beautiful telescopic object, the distance being a little more than 3″, while the two stars are nearly equal, and very white, although one of them seems whiter than the other.

It will be observed that the outline of the constellation Aquarius is very curious, somewhat resembling that of the State of Louisiana tipped on its side. The broader part of it runs down toward Fomalhaut, and the northern part extends westward, like an L added to a house, between Equuleus and Capricornus. The latter, the constellation of the “Goat,” is relatively small and compact. Its two most interesting stars are Alpha (α), or Algedi, the “Goat,” and Beta (β), or Dabih (signification uncertain), both in one of the horns of the imaginary animal. Each of these stars is a wide double. The distance between the Alphas is 373″, and that between the Betas 205″, the latter being more than a tenth of the apparent diameter of the moon. A good eye sees at once that Alpha is double; but the two stars in Beta cannot be seen without a glass, because one of them is below the sixth magnitude, the _minimum visible_ for the naked eye. Each of the stars in Beta is a telescopic double. The Goat heads westward, and the stars Delta (δ) and Gamma (γ) are in his tail. This constellation has given us our Tropic of Capricorn, because the place of the winter solstice was once within its boundaries, although now we find it far west, in Sagittarius.

Above the head of Capricornus we recognize our old acquaintance Altair, in the Eagle, and east of this the singular little constellation of Delphinus, the “Dolphin,” often called “Job’s Coffin,” a name for which I have never been able to find any explanation. Like all small constellations whose stars are comparatively close together, it immediately attracts the eye. None of its stars exceeds the fourth magnitude; but three of them, Alpha, Beta, and Gamma, are telescopic doubles, the last named being particularly beautiful on account of the contrast of colors, gold and green; distance 11″.

Directly north of Altair is the very small constellation of Sagitta, the “Arrow,” interesting when viewed with an opera-glass for its row of little stars from which, as from a maypole lying horizontally, depend loops of still smaller stars looking like garlands. In ancient times this was sometimes called “Cupid’s Arrow,” but they did not venture to represent the little god himself. Above Sagitta are the small stars constituting the double constellation of Vulpecula et Anser, the “Little Fox and the Goose.”

Simply pausing to recognize the presence of the Northern Cross, we turn to the eastern side of the meridian, where we find Pegasus, with his Great Square. This is one of the most conspicuous figures in the sky. The star at the northeastern corner of the square is Alpheratz, of which I have spoken in the Introduction, as belonging in common to Andromeda and Pegasus. When we come to Cassiopeia I shall point out a remarkable fact relating to Alpheratz and its twin, Gamma Pegasi, about 15 degrees directly south. Every lover of the “classics” of course feels a thrill of pleasure in seeing Pegasus in the sky, “in wild flight and free.” One can spare many of the heroes for the sake of giving him room. Shakespeare’s references to the constellations are much less frequent and definite than one could wish, but he has clearly mentioned one or two, and it may be that he had the starry eidolon of the Winged Horse in his eye when he wrote, in _Troilus and Cressida_:

“But let the ruffian Boreas once enrage
The gentle Thetis, and anon behold
The strong-ribbed bark through liquid mountains cut,
Bounding between the two moist elements
Like Perseus’ horse.”

The constellation extends far westward from the Square, and in the imaginative sky pictures that illustrate old charts of the heavens the star Epsilon (ε) is in the nose of Pegasus, as he stretches out his neck to reach his foal, Equuleus. But the horse, with his feet toward the north, is shown upside down, unless you turn your back to the south when looking at him. The star Beta (β) is attractive on account of its neighbors forming a striking triangle with it; but the space within the Square is relatively vacant. Alpha (α) and Beta (β) are respectively Markab, the “Saddle,” and Scheat (signification uncertain).

South of the Square of Pegasus we see the western part of the constellation of Pisces, whose small stars run in streams toward the eastern horizon. Pisces furnishes one of the most remarkable examples of this phenomenon, in which the stars are seen arrayed in long, winding lines, like buttercups following a brook. Cetus is also seen rising south of Pisces; but we shall deal with these constellations later. Meanwhile we return to Alpheratz, at the northeast corner of the Square of Pegasus. The name is derived from an Arabic phrase meaning the “Horse’s Navel”; but the star is now generally associated with Andromeda, and is, indeed, the Alpha of that constellation, and shines on the maiden’s head. The star Delta (δ), in Andromeda, marks her breast, and her extended arms and chained hands are shown by rows and groups of small stars on the north and south. Beta (β), or Mirach, is in her girdle, and the two small stars northwest of it lead the eye to one of the most wonderful objects in the sky--the Great Andromeda Nebula. You may detect it as a misty speck with the naked eye; an opera-glass will show you plainly that it is a little luminous cloud. In Chart X its position is indicated by a little circle near the star Nu (ν). In a telescope it appears of a spindle shape, with a bright axis, but the best views of it are afforded by photography. On the photographic plate, exposed continuously for hours to its rays, it gradually builds up its marvellous form--the great central condensation, with the encircling spirals, emerging in all their strange splendor. It resembles a whirlwind of snow, and the appearance of swift motion and terrific force is startling. Its spectrum, instead of being that characteristic of gases, indicates that it consists principally of matter in a star-like state of condensation, and some have imagined that it is an outside universe, composed of stars too distant to be separately distinguished, and arrayed in mighty spirals, which recall the form of the Milky Way. The latest investigations show evidence, however, that it is partly nebular in constitution. These things once known, the contemplative eye is drawn to that misty speck as to a magnet.