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.
[Illustration: CHART III--THE AUTUMN EVENING SKY]
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.