Read Ebook: Curiosities of the Sky by Serviss Garrett Putman

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Great spiral nebula in Andromeda The Milky Way Star-cluster in Hercules Great southern star-cluster, Omega Centauri The Pleiades The "Great Dipper" Cassiopeia The "Northern Crown" The "Southern Cross" Chart showing location of Tycho's star, 1572, and Nova Persei of 1901 Nova Persei, with its nebular rings Lord Rosse's nebula Wonderful spiral in triangulum Spiral in Ursa Major Nebula in Cetus The Orion nebula The Corona A solar "prominence" Auroral beams seen in England Auroral arches of an eliptic form seen in the Arctic regions Auroral curtain seen in Scandinavia Auroral arches seen in Scandinavia Swift's comet Daniels' comet Brooks' comet Curious forms of meteorite trains Section of the atmosphere up to 100 kilometers A meteor photographed in flight Looking across Coon Butte crater from northern rim Trail on south side, Coon Butte crater The craters Clavius, Longomontanus, Tycho, etc. Western part of the Mare Serenitatis Mare Tranquilitatis and surroundings Lunar craters Theophilus and surrounding region Mare Crisium Schiaparelli's chart of Mars, showing the so-called system of canals

PREFACE What Froude says of history is true also of astronomy: it is the most impressive where it transcends explanation. It is not the mathematics of astronomy, but the wonder and the mystery that seize upon the imagination. The calculation of an eclipse owes all its prestige to the sublimity of its data; the operation, in itself, requires no more mental effort than the preparation of a railway time-table.

The dominion which astronomy has always held over the minds of men is akin to that of poetry; when the former becomes merely instructive and the latter purely didactic, both lose their power over the imagination. Astronomy is known as the oldest of the sciences, and it will be the longest-lived because it will always have arcana that have not been penetrated.

Some of the things described in this book are little known to the average reader, while others are well known; but all possess the fascination of whatever is strange, marvelous, obscure, or mysterious--magnified, in this case, by the portentous scale of the phenomena.

The idea of the author is to tell about these things in plain language, but with as much scientific accuracy as plain language will permit, showing the wonder that is in them without getting away from the facts. Most of them have hitherto been discussed only in technical form, and in treatises that the general public seldom sees and never reads.

Among the topics touched upon are:

The strange unfixedness of the "fixed stars," the vast migrations of the suns and worlds constituting the universe.

The slow passing out of existence of those collocations of stars which for thousands of years have formed famous "constellations," preserving the memory of mythological heroes and heroines, and perhaps of otherwise unrecorded history.

The tendency of stars to assemble in immense clouds, swarms, and clusters.

The existence in some 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 murkiest night.

The marvelous phenomena of new, or temporary, stars, which appear as suddenly as conflagrations, and often turn into something else as eccentric as themselves.

The amazing forms of the "whirlpool," "spiral," "pinwheel," and "lace," or "tress," nebulae.

The strange surroundings of the sun, only seen in particular circumstances, but evidently playing a constant part in the daily phenomena of the solar system.

The mystery of the Zodiacal Light and the Gegenschein.

The extraordinary transformations undergone by comets and their tails.

The prodigies of meteorites and masses of stone and metal fallen from the sky.

The cataclysms that have wrecked the moon.

The problem of life and intelligence on the planet Mars.

The problematical origin and fate of the asteroids.

The strange phenomena of the auroral lights.

An attempt has been made to develop these topics in an orderly way, showing their connection, so that the reader may obtain a broad general view of the chief mysteries and problems of astronomy, and an idea of the immense field of discovery which still lies, almost unexplored, before it.

CURIOSITIES OF THE SKY

I The Windows of Absolute Night

To most minds mystery is more fascinating than science. But when science itself leads straight up to the borders of mystery and there comes to a dead stop, saying, "At present I can no longer see my way," the force of the charm is redoubled. On the other hand, the illimitable is no less potent in mystery than the invisible, whence the dramatic effect of Keats' "stout Cortez" staring at the boundless Pacific while all his men look at each other with a wild surmise, "silent upon a peak in Darien." It is with similar feelings that the astronomer regards certain places where from the peaks of the universe his vision seems to range out into endless empty space. He sees there the shore of his little isthmus, and, beyond, unexplored immensity.

The Galaxy, or Milky Way, surrounds the borders of our island in space like a stellar garland, and when openings appear in it they are, by contrast, far more impressive than the general darkness of the interstellar expanse seen in other directions. Yet even that expanse is not everywhere equally dark, for it contains gloomy deeps discernable with careful watching. Here, too, contrast plays an important part, though less striking than within the galactic region. Some of Sir William Herschel's observations appear to indicate an association between these tenebrious spots and neighboring star clouds and nebulae. It is an illuminating bit of astronomical history that when he was sweeping the then virgin heavens with his great telescopes he was accustomed to say to his sister who, note-book in hand, waited at his side to take down his words, fresh with the inspiration of discovery: "Prepare to write; the nebulae are coming; here space is vacant."

The most famous of the "coal-sacks," and the first to be brought to general attention before astronomers had awakened to the significance of such things, lies adjacent to the "Southern Cross," and is truly an amazing phenomenon. It is not alone the conspicuousness of this celestial vacancy, opening suddenly in the midst of one of the richest parts of the Galaxy, that has given it its fame, but quite as much the superstitious awe with which it was regarded by the early explorers of the South Seas. To them, as well as to those who listened in rapt wonder to their tales, the "Coal-sack" seemed to possess some occult connection with the mystic "Cross." In the eyes of the sailors it was not a vacancy so much as a sable reality in the sky, and as, shuddering, they stared at it, they piously crossed themselves. It was another of the magical wonders of the unknown South, and as such it formed the basis of many a "wild surmise" and many a sea-dog's yarn. Scientific investigation has not diminished its prestige, and today no traveler in the southern hemisphere is indifferent to its fascinating strangeness, while some find it the most impressive spectacle of the antarctic heavens.

All around, up to the very edge of the yawning gap, the sheen of the Milky Way is surpassingly glorious; but there, as if in obedience to an almighty edict, everything vanishes. A 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 midst of a black, motionless, waveless tarn. The dimensions of the lagoon of darkness, which is oval or pear-shaped, are eight degrees by five, so that it occupies a space in the sky about one hundred and thirty times greater than the area of the full moon. It attracts attention as soon as the eye is directed toward the quarter where it exists, and by virtue of the rarity of such phenomena it appears a far greater wonder than the drifts of stars that are heaped around it. Now that observatories are multiplying in the southern hemisphere, the great austral "Coal-sack" will, no doubt, receive attention proportioned to its importance as one of the most significant features of the sky. Already at the Sydney Observatory photographs have shown that the southern portion of this Dead Sea of Space is not quite "bottomless," although its northern part defies the longest sounding lines of the astronomer.

There is a similar, but less perfect, "coal-sack" in the northern hemisphere, in the constellation of "The Swan," which, strange to say, also contains a well-marked figure of a cross outlined by stars. This gap lies near the top of the cross-shaped figure. It is best seen by averted vision, which brings out the contrast with the Milky Way, which is quite brilliant around it. It does not, however, exercise the same weird attraction upon the eye as the southern "Coal-sack," for instead of looking like an absolute void in the sky, it rather appears as if a canopy of dark gauze had been drawn over the stars. We shall see the possible significance of this appearance later.

Just above the southern horizon of our northern middle latitudes, in summer, where the Milky Way breaks up into vast sheets of nebulous luminosity, lying over and between the constellations Scorpio and Sagittarius, there is a remarkable assemblage of "coal-sacks," though none is of great size. One of them, near a conspicuous star-cluster in Scorpio, M80, is interesting for having been the first of these strange objects noted by Herschel. Probably it was its nearness to M80 which suggested to his mind the apparent connection of such vacancies with star-clusters which we have already mentioned.

All about the cluster the bed of the Galaxy is strangely disturbed, and in places nearly denuded, as if its contents had been raked away to form the immense stack and the smaller accumulations of stars around it. The well-known "Trifid Nebula" is also included in the field of the photograph, which covers a truly marvelous region, so intricate in its mingling of nebulae, star-clusters, star-swarms, star-streams, and dark vacancies that no description can do it justice. Yet, chaotic as it appears, there is an unmistakable suggestion of unity about it, impressing the beholder with the idea that all the different parts are in some way connected, and have not been fortuitously thrown together. Miss Agnes M. Clerke made the striking remark that the dusky lanes in M8 are exemplified on the largest scale in the great rift dividing the Milky Way, from Cygnus in the northern hemisphere all the way to the "Cross" in the southern. Similar lanes are found in many other clusters, and they are generally associated with flanking rows of stars, resembling in their arrangement the thick-set houses and villas along the roadways that traverse the approaches to a great city.

The difficulty of these questions indicates one of the reasons why it has been suggested that the seeming gaps, or many of them, are not openings at all, but opaque screens cutting off the light from stars behind them. That this is quite possible in some cases is shown by Barnard's later photographs, particularly those of the singular region around the star Rho Ophiuchi. Here are to be seen somber lanes and patches, apparently forming a connected system which covers an immense space, and which their discoverer thinks may constitute a "dark nebula." This seems at first a startling suggestion; but, after all, why should their not be dark nebulae as well as visible ones? In truth, it has troubled some astronomers to explain the luminosity of the bright nebulae, since it is not to be supposed that matter in so diffuse a state can be incandescent through heat, and phosphorescent light is in itself a mystery. The supposition is also in accord with what we know of the existence of dark solid bodies in space. Many bright stars are accompanied by obscure companions, sometimes as massive as themselves; the planets are non-luminous; the same is true of meteors before they plunge into the atmosphere and become heated by friction; and many plausible reasons have been found for believing that space contains as many obscure as shining bodies of great size. It is not so difficult, after all, then, to believe that there are immense collections of shadowy gases and meteoric dust whose presence is only manifested when they intercept the light coming from shining bodies behind them.

This would account for the apparent extinguishment of light in open space, which is indicated by the falling off in relative number of telescopic stars below the tenth magnitude. Even as things are, the amount of light coming to us from stars too faint to be seen with the naked eye is so great that the statement of it generally surprises persons who are unfamiliar with the inner facts of astronomy. It has been calculated that on a clear night the total starlight from the entire celestial sphere amounts to one-sixtieth of the light of the full moon; but of this less than one-twenty-fifth is due to stars separately distinguished by the eye. If there were no obscuring medium in space, it is probable that the amount of starlight would be noticeably and perhaps enormously increased.

There remains the question of the luminiferous ether by whose agency the waves of light are borne through space. The ether is as mysterious as gravitation. With regard to ether we only infer its existence from the effects which we ascribe to it. Evidently the ether must extend as far as the most distant visible stars. But does it continue on indefinitely in outer space? If it does, then the invisibility of the other systems must be due to their distance diminishing the quantity of light that comes from them below the limit of perceptibility, or to the interposition of absorbing media; if it does not, then the reason why we cannot see them is owing to the absence of a means of conveyance for the light waves, as the lack of an interplanetary atmosphere prevents us from hearing the thunder of sun-spots. . On this supposition each starry system would be enveloped in its own globule of ether, and no light could cross from one to another. But the probability is that both the ether and gravitation are ubiquitous, and that all the stellar systems are immersed in the former like clouds of phosphorescent organisms in the sea.

II Star-Clouds, Star-Clusters, and Star-Streams

In the preceding chapter we have seen something of the strangely complicated structure of the Galaxy, or Milky Way. We now proceed to study more comprehensively that garlanded "Pathway of the Gods."

Judged by the eye alone, the Milky Way is one of the most delicately beautiful phenomena in the entire realm of nature--a shimmer of silvery gauze stretched across the sky; but studied in the light of its revelations, it is the most stupendous object presented to human ken. Let us consider, first, its appearance to ordinary vision. Its apparent position in the sky shifts according to the season. On a serene, cloudless summer evening, in the absence of the moon, whose light obscures it, one sees the Galaxy spanning the heavens from north to southeast of the zenith like a phosphorescent arch. In early spring it forms a similar but, upon the whole, less brilliant arch west of the zenith. Between spring and summer it lies like a long, faint, twilight band along the northern horizon. At the beginning of winter it again forms an arch, this time spanning the sky from east to west, a little north of the zenith. These are its positions as viewed from the mean latitude of the United States. Even the beginner in star-gazing does not have to watch it throughout the year in order to be convinced that it is, in reality, a great circle, extending entirely around the celestial sphere. We appear to be situated near its center, but its periphery is evidently far away in the depths of space.

Although to the casual observer it seems but a delicate scarf of light, brighter in some places than in others, but hazy 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 marvelously complex in detail. The telescope shows that it consists of stars too faint and small through excess of distance to be separately visible. Of the hundred million suns which some estimates have fixed as the probable population of the starry universe, the vast majority are included in this strange belt of misty light. But they are not uniformly distributed in it; on the contrary, they are arrayed in clusters, knots, bunches, clouds, and streams. The appearance is somewhat as if the Galaxy consisted of innumerable swarms of silver-winged bees, more or less intermixed, some massed together, some crossing the paths of others, but all governed by a single purpose which leads them to encircle the region of space in which we are situated.

From the beginning of the systematic study of the heavens, the fact has been recognized that the form of the Milky Way denotes the scheme of the sidereal system. At first it was thought that the shape of the system 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. According to this view, the galactic belt was an effect of perspective; for when looking in the direction of the plane of the disk, the eye ranged through an immense extension of stars which blended into a glimmering blur, surrounding us like a ring; while when looking out from the sides of the disk we saw but few stars, and in those directions the heavens appeared relatively blank. Finally it was recognized that this theory did not correspond with the observed appearances, and it became evident that the Milky Way was not a mere effect of perspective, but an actual band of enormously distant stars, forming a circle about the sphere, the central opening of the ring being many times broader than the width of the ring itself. Our sun is one of the scattered stars in the central opening.

As an indication of the extraordinary speculations to which the mystery of the Milky Way has given rise, a theory recently proposed by Prof. George C. Comstock may be mentioned. Starting with the data that the number of stars increases as the Milky Way is approached, and reaches a maximum in its plane, while on the other hand the number of nebulae is greatest outside the Milky Way and increases with distance from it, and that the Milky Way, although a complete ring, is broad and diffuse on one side through one-half its course--that half alone containing nebulae--and relatively narrow and well defined on the opposite side, the author of this singular speculation avers that these facts can best be explained by supposing that the invisible universe consists of two interpenetrating parts, one of which is a chaos of indefinite extent, strewn with stars and nebulous dust, and the other a long, broad but comparatively thin cluster of stars, including the sun as one of its central members. This flat star-cluster is conceived to be moving edgewise through the chaos, and, according to Professor Comstock, it acts after the manner of a snow-plough sweeping away the cosmic dust and piling it on either hand above and below the plane of the moving cluster. It thus forms a transparent rift, through which we see farther and command a view of more stars than through the intensified dust-clouds on either hand. This rift is the Milky Way. The dust thrown aside toward the poles of the Milky Way is the substance of the nebulae which abound there. Ahead, where the front of the star-plough is clearing the way, the chaos is nearer at hand, and consequently there the rift subtends a broader angle, and is filled with primordial dust, which, having been annexed by the vanguard of the star-swarm, forms the nebulae seen only in that part of the Milky Way. But behind, the rift appears narrow because there we look farther away between dust-clouds produced ages ago by the front of the plough, and no scattered dust remains in that part of the rift.

In quoting an outline of this strikingly original theory the present writer should not be understood as assenting to it. That it appears bizarre is not, in itself, a reason for rejecting it, when we are dealing with so problematical and enigmatical a subject as the Milky Way; but the serious objection is that the theory does not sufficiently accord with the observed phenomena. There is too much evidence that the Milky Way is an organic system, however fantastic its form, to permit the belief that it can only be a rift in chaotic clouds. As with every organism, we find that its parts are more or less clearly repeated in its ensemble. Among all the strange things that the Milky Way contains there is nothing so extraordinary as itself. Every astronomer must many times have found himself marveling at it in those comparatively rare nights when it shows all its beauty and all its strangeness. In its great broken rifts, divisions, and spirals are found the gigantic prototypes of similar forms in its star-clouds and clusters. As we have said, it determines the general shape of the whole sidereal system. Some of the brightest stars in the sky appear to hang like jewels suspended at the ends of tassels dropped from the Galaxy. Among these pendants are the Pleiades and the Hyades. Orion, too, the "Mighty Hunter," is caught in "a loop of light" thrown out from it. The majority of the great first-magnitude stars seem related to it, as if they formed an inner ring inclined at an angle of some twenty degrees to its plane. Many of the long curves that set off from it on both sides are accompanied by corresponding curves of lucid stars. In a word, it offers every appearance of structural connection with the entire starry system. That the universe should have assumed the form of a wreath is certainly a matter for astonishment; but it would have been still more astonishing if it had been a cube, a rhomboid, or a dodecahedron, for then we should have had to suppose that something resembling the forces that shape crystals had acted upon the stars, and the difficulty of explaining the universe by the laws of gravitation would have been increased.

From the Milky Way as a whole we pass to the vast clouds, swarms, and clusters of stars of which it is made up. It may be, as some astronomers hold, that most of the galactic stars are much smaller 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 remoteness, which has been estimated at not less than ten thousand to twenty thousand light-years their actual masses cannot be extremely small. The minutest of them are entitled to be regarded as real suns, and they vary enormously in magnitude. The effects of their attractions upon one another can only be inferred from their clustering, because their relative movements are not apparent on account of the brevity of the observations that we can make. But imagine a being for whom a million years would be but as a flitting moment; to him the Milky Way would appear in a state of ceaseless agitation--swirling with "a fury of whirlpool motion."

Smaller than either star-clouds or star-swarms, and differing from both in their organization, are star-clusters. These, unlike the others, are found outside as well as inside the Milky Way, although they are more numerous inside its boundaries than elsewhere. The term star-cluster is sometimes applied, though improperly, to assemblages which are rather groups, such, for instance, as the Pleiades. In their most characteristic aspect star-clusters are of a globular shape--globes of suns! A famous example of a globular star-cluster, but one not included in the Milky Way, is the "Great Cluster in Hercules." This is barely visible to the naked eye, but a small telescope shows its character, and in a large one it presents a marvelous spectacle. Photographs of such clusters are, perhaps, less effective than those of star-clouds, because the central condensation of stars in them is so great that their light becomes blended in an indistinguishable blur. The beautiful effect of the incessant play of infinitesimal rays over the apparently compact surface of the cluster, as if it were a globe of the finest frosted silver shining in an electric beam, 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 seems almost a solid mass in which the stars are packed like the ice crystals in a snowball.

The same question rises to the lips of every observer: How can they possibly have been brought into such a situation? The marvel does not grow less when we know that, instead of being closely compacted, the stars of the cluster are probably separated by millions of miles; for we know that their distances apart are slight as compared with their remoteness from the Earth. Sir William Herschel estimated their number to be about fourteen thousand, but in fact they are uncountable. If we could view them from a point just within the edge of the assemblage, they would offer the appearance of a hollow hemisphere emblazoned with stars of astonishing brilliancy; the near-by ones unparalleled in splendor by any celestial object known to us, while the more distant ones would resemble ordinary stars. An inhabitant of the cluster would not know, except by a process of ratiocination, that he was dwelling in a globular assemblage of suns; only from a point far outside would their spherical arrangement become evident to the eye. Imagine fourteen-thousand fire-balloons with an approach to regularity in a spherical space--say, ten miles in diameter; there would be an average of less than thirty in every cubic mile, and it would be necessary to go to a considerable distance in order to see them as a globular aggregation; yet from a point sufficiently far away they would blend into a glowing ball.

Then, on the other hand, we have the observation of Herschel, since abundantly confirmed, that space is unusually vacant in the immediate neighborhood of condensed star-clusters and nebulae, which, as far as it goes, might be taken as an indication that the assembled stars had been drawn together by their mutual attractions, and that the tendency to aggregation is still bringing new members toward the cluster. But in that case there must 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 seems now to be taking place in the Orion Nebula.

A yet more remarkable globular star-cluster exists in the southern hemisphere, Omega Centauri. In this case the central condensation of stars presents an almost uniform blaze of light. Like the Hercules cluster, that in Centaurus is surrounded with stars scattered over a broad field and showing an appearance of radial arrangement. In fact, except for its greater richness, Omega Centauri is an exact duplicate of its northern rival. Each appears to an imaginative spectator as a veritable "city of suns." Mathematics shrinks from the task of disentangling the maze of motions in such an assemblage. It would seem that the chance of collisions is not to be neglected, and this idea finds a certain degree of confirmation in the appearance of "temporary stars" which have more than once blazed out in, or close by, globular star-clusters.

This leads up to the notable fact, first established by Professor Bailey a few years ago, that such clusters are populous with variable stars. Omega Centauri and the Hercules cluster are especially remarkable in this respect. The variables found in them are all of short period and the changes of light show a noteworthy tendency to uniformity. The first thought is that these phenomena must be due to collisions among the crowded stars, but, if so, the encounters cannot be between the stars themselves, but probably between stars and meteor swarms revolving around them. Such periodic collisions might go on for ages without the meteors being exhausted by incorporation with the stars. This explanation appears all the more probable because one would naturally expect that flocks of meteors would abound in a close aggregation of stars. It is also consistent with Perrine's discovery--that the globular star clusters are powdered with minute stars strewn thickly among the brighter ones.

A different kind of association between stars and nebulae is shown in some surprising photographic objects in the constellation Cygnus, where long, wispy nebulae, billions of miles in length, some of them looking like tresses streaming in a breeze, lie amid fields of stars which seem related to them. But the relation is of a most singular kind, for notwithstanding the delicate structure of the long nebulae they appear to act as barriers, causing the stars to heap themselves on one side. The stars are two, three, or four times as numerous on one side of the nebulae as on the other. These nebulae, as far as appearance goes, might 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 imagination is at a loss to account for these extraordinary phenomena; yet there they are, faithfully giving us their images whenever the photographic plate is exposed to their radiations.

Thus the more we see of the universe with improved methods of observation, and the more we invent aids to human senses, each enabling us to penetrate a little deeper into the unseen, the greater becomes the mystery. The telescope carried us far, photography is carrying us still farther; but what as yet unimagined instrument will take us to the bottom, the top, and the end? And then, what hitherto untried power of thought will enable us to comprehend the meaning of it all?

To the untrained eye the stars and the planets are not distinguishable. It is customary to call them all alike "stars." But since the planets more or less rapidly change their places in the sky, in consequence of their revolution about the sun, while the stars proper seem to remain always in the same relative positions, the latter are spoken of as "fixed stars." In the beginnings of astronomy it was not known that the "fixed stars" had any motion independent of their apparent annual revolution with the whole sky about the earth as a seeming center. Now, however, we know that the term "fixed stars" is paradoxical, for there is not a single really fixed object in the whole celestial sphere. The apparent fixity in the positions of the stars is due to their immense distance, combined with the shortness of the time during which we are able to observe them. It is like viewing the plume of smoke issuing from a steamer, hull down, at sea: if one does not continue to watch it for a long time it appears to be motionless, although in reality it may be traveling at great speed across the line of sight. Even the planets seem fixed in position if one watches them for a single night only, and the more distant ones do not sensibly change their places, except after many nights of observation. Neptune, for instance, moves but little more than two degrees in the course of an entire year, and in a month its change of place is only about one-third of the diameter of the full moon.

Yet, fixed as they seem, the stars are actually moving with a speed in comparison with which, in some cases, the planets might almost be said to stand fast in their tracks. Jupiter's speed in his orbit is about eight miles per second, Neptune's is less than three and one-half miles, and the earth's is about eighteen and one-half miles; while there are "fixed stars" which move two hundred or three hundred miles per second. They do not all, however, move with so great a velocity, for some appear to travel no faster than the planets. But in all cases, notwithstanding their real speed, long-continued and exceedingly careful observations are required to demonstrate that they are moving at all. No more overwhelming impression 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 motion across the line of sight amounts to two hundred miles 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 heavens!

There is one vast difference between the motions of the stars and those of the planets to which attention should be at once called: the planets, being under the control of a central force emanating from their immediate master, the sun, all move in the same direction and in orbits concentric about the sun; the stars, on the other hand, move in every conceivable direction and have no apparent center of motion, for all efforts to discover such a center have failed. At one time, when theology had finally to accept the facts of science, a grandiose conception arose in some pious minds, according to which the Throne of God was situated at the exact center of His Creation, and, seated there, He watched the magnificent spectacle of the starry systems obediently revolving around Him. Astronomical discoveries and speculations seemed for a time to afford some warrant for this view, which was, moreover, an acceptable substitute for the abandoned geocentric theory in minds that could only conceive of God as a superhuman artificer, constantly admiring his own work. No longer ago than the middle of the nineteenth century a German astronomer, Maedler, believed that he had actually found the location of the center about which the stellar universe revolved. He placed it in the group of the Pleiades, and upon his authority an extraordinary imaginative picture was sometimes drawn of the star Alcyone, the brightest of the Pleiades, as the very seat of the Almighty. This idea even seemed to gain a kind of traditional support from the mystic significance, without known historical origin, which has for many ages, and among widely separated peoples, been attached to the remarkable group of which Alcyone is the chief. But since Maedler's time it has been demonstrated that the Pleiades cannot be the center of revolution of the universe, and, as already remarked, all attempts to find or fix such a center have proved abortive. Yet so powerful was the hold that the theory took upon the popular imagination, that even today astronomers are often asked if Alcyone is not the probable site of "Jerusalem the Golden."

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