sleigh-bells and the thrilling creak of runners on crisp, hard snow,
for it was during a drive home from a “Christmas-tree” in a country
church that I first made the acquaintance of that imperial star. It
seemed to me more brilliantly beautiful than any of the dazzling
gifts that had hung so magically on the illuminated tree. Its splendor
is unearthly, putting diamonds and sapphires to shame. How people can
live and be happy without ever gazing at such an object surpasses the
understanding of any one who has once beheld and yielded to its charm.
The splendors of Aladdin’s Cave are for children, and fade in the light
of advancing life, but these glories of the universe are for men and
women, and grow brighter with the years.
The renown of Sirius is as ancient as the human race. There has never
been a time or a people in which or by whom it was not worshipped,
reverenced, and admired. To the builders of the Egyptian temples and
pyramids it was an object as familiar as the sun itself. Its name is
usually regarded as being derived from the Greek Σείριος, the “Bright
or Shining One,” but it is also thought that it may be connected with
Osiris. The familiar title of the “Dog Star” comes from its association
with the _dies caniculariæ_ of the Romans.
“As the movable Egyptian year,” says George Cornewell Lewis, “was held
to have originally begun at the heliacal rising of the Dog Star, which
was contemporary with the ordinary commencement of the inundation of
the Nile, this period was, by late writers, entitled the Canicular, or
Sothiac, period, Sothis being the Egyptian name for the Dog Star.”
Norman Lockyer identifies Sirius with the goddess Isis, or Hathor, who
was personified by that star, and the temple of Isis at Dendera was,
he avers, built to watch it. “It has been pointed out, times without
number,” he adds, “that the inscriptions indicate that by far the most
important astronomical event in Egyptian history was the rising of the
star Sirius at this precise time.”
Sirius has sometimes been identified with the “Mazzaroth” of the Book
of Job.
The great star is worthy of all its fame, not only by its magnificent
beauty, but by the revelations which modern science has afforded us
concerning it. While not comparable in actual luminosity with Rigel,
Canopus, or even Arcturus, it immensely outshines the best of them to
our eyes because of its relative nearness. Its distance is only about
50,000,000,000,000 miles (parallax 0″.37), so that it is really one of
the nearest stars in the sky. Light requires about nine years to come
to us from Sirius. Outshining the sun at least thirty times, it is so
bright, even at that distance, that a special rank has been given to
it in stellar photometry. Formerly all very bright stars were ranked
as of the first magnitude, but greater exactness is now employed, the
naked-eye stars being divided among eight magnitudes, running from
6 up to -1. Thus the faintest star visible to the naked eye is of
magnitude 6; a star 2.51 times brighter is of magnitude 5; a star 2.51
times brighter than that is of magnitude 4, and so on up to magnitude
1. A star 2.51 times brighter than magnitude 1 is of magnitude 0; and
one 2.51 times brighter than the 0 magnitude is of magnitude -1, a
degree of brilliance which is attained by Sirius alone. In fact, Sirius
exceeds magnitude -1, its real rank being -1.6. On the same scale the
magnitude of the sun would be -26.3. The standard first magnitude s
usually taken as being represented by the star Altair, although that
star is not _exactly_ of that magnitude. As a ready rule it may be
said that each magnitude is two and a half times brighter than the
next below it, and a difference of six magnitudes corresponds to an
increase of one hundred times in brilliance. Sirius is about ten times
as bright as Altair. While, if _seen from the same distance_, Sirius
would appear at least thirty times as bright as the sun, at our actual
distance from both the light received from the sun is to that received
from Sirius in the ratio of about 7,000,000,000 to 1. While by no means
the largest sun in the universe, Sirius is the largest sun in our part
of space, and some indications have been detected that it may, to a
certain extent, control the motion of the solar system. In other words,
our sun and some of the nearer stars appear to form a group, or family,
of which Sirius is probably the chief.
Sirius is an intensely white star, but its whiteness is shot with a
tint of blue or green. It has not the purity of light of Spica. Owing
also to its great brilliance, it twinkles incessantly, darting, in
an unsteady atmosphere, rays of all the colors of the rainbow. The
spectroscope shows that it is a sun at an earlier stage of development
than ours. It is also a binary. A very massive companion, singularly
faint for its size, revolves round it in a period of about fifty-three
years. At present the distance between these stars is more than 6″. The
small star is more than half as massive as Sirius, but ten thousand
times less brilliant--one would say a dying sun linked by gravitation
with another in the heyday of its life and splendor.
The constellation Canis Major, of which Sirius is the leader, is very
striking in outline when well above the horizon. Some six degrees west
of Sirius is seen the second star of the constellation, Beta (β), or
Murzim (Arabic _Al Murzim_, the “Announcer”), a name which Ideler says
originated in the fact that this star rises ahead of Sirius, and thus
appears to announce its coming. The remainder of the constellation
should be viewed an hour or two later than that for which Chart IV is
drawn, or a month later in the season, when it is farther from the
horizon. It represents the hind-quarters of the imaginary dog. The
star Epsilon (ε), or Adhara, perhaps the brightest in the group, is a
double; colors orange and violet; distance 7″.5. The smaller star is
of only the ninth magnitude. Delta (δ) is called Wezen, the “Weight,”
because “the star seems to rise with difficulty from the horizon,” an
excellent instance of the fanciful titles which the Arabs and others
often gave to stars. Zeta (ζ) is Furud, and Eta (η) Aludra. The meaning
of these names is uncertain. Allen says that the Arabs called Epsilon,
Delta, Eta, and Omicron (ο) “The Virgins.” But they had other names for
them suggested by fancied resemblances as they rose sparkling from the
desert.
From Canis Major the eye rises to Orion, the most glorious of all
constellations:
“Whoso kens not him in cloudless night
Gleaming aloft, shall cast his eyes in vain
To find a brighter sign in all the heaven.”
Brown, in his _Primitive Constellations_, undertakes to derive the
name from the Akkadian Uru-anna, the “Light of Heaven.” Whatever its
origin, it is certainly very ancient. For some thousands of years
it has been associated with a traditional giant who looms in the
background of Greek mythology. In the classical atlases of the heavens
Orion is represented as standing in an attitude of defiance, facing
westward, brandishing a huge club above his head, and lifting his
left arm, covered with a lion’s hide, to meet the charge of Taurus,
the “Bull.” And under some such guise all mankind has seen him for
untold ages--always a gigantic figure, always heroic in character,
always defying or pursuing--the symbol of strength, courage, conquest,
and victory. The same idea underlies every representation of this
constellation; whether it be the mythical “Giant” of the East, or
“Nimrod” or “Joshua” or the “Armed King” or the “Warrior” or the
“Hunter,” it is invariably the figure of a doer of great deeds which is
presented to the imagination. And it must be said that the aspect of
the constellation is in accord with such thoughts. No one can look at
it without a stirring of the blood. It has something of the effect of a
great battle-piece, and it is not surprising that they once endeavored
in France to connect it with the name of Napoleon. Although its two
chief stars are separated some eighteen degrees, and the central “Belt”
forms a striking figure by itself, yet there is an unmistakable unity
about the constellation, and one would hardly think of dividing it into
separate groups. Singularly enough, this sense of oneness is borne out
by the photographic discovery that a vast swirl of nebulous matter
surrounds the entire constellation, and by the spectroscopic proof that
nearly all of its stars belong to one type, which has become known as
the “Orion type.”
Perhaps the first feature of Orion that strikes the eye is the
arrangement of the three nearly equal bright stars which form the Belt.
Their Greek-letter names are Delta, Epsilon, and Zeta, and by these
they are usually designated, but there is a great charm in their Arabic
titles, which, in the same order, are _Mintaka_, “Belt”; _Alnilam_
(from “String of Pearls”); and _Alnitah_, “Girdle.” It will be observed
that all of these names have a similar signification, and probably each
of them was originally employed to designate the whole row.[2]
The Belt is remarkable in another way--it points very nearly toward
Sirius; it is like a glittering signboard indicating the position of
the brightest star in the sky. To hasty observation the row seems to be
perfectly straight, although there is in reality a slight bend, and the
distances separating the three stars appear to be exactly equal. The
effect is as beautiful as it is surprising.
Below the Belt hangs a fainter row of stars constituting the “Sword.”
The central star of this row, Theta (θ), arrests the attention at once
by a curious appearance of nebulosity, especially if it is examined
with an opera-glass. A telescope shows it to be enveloped in one of the
grandest nebulæ in the sky, the celebrated “Great Nebula of Orion.”
With a large glass its appearance is astonishing in the highest degree.
Instead of being elongated like the great nebula in Andromeda, it is
about as broad as long, with no single centre of condensation, but many
curdled accumulations, interspersed with partial gaps, and a great
variety of curved lines of brighter nebulosity, suggesting the misty
skeleton of some nondescript monster impact of phosphorescent clouds.
A large number of stars are scattered over or through it, and some of
them seem clearly to be connected with it, as if created out of its
substance. Unlike the Andromeda nebula, this shows only the spectrum of
glowing gas, so that no such supposition as has been made in the other
case--_viz._, that it may be an outside universe--is admissible here.
It is rather a chaos, rich with the elements from whose combinations
spring suns and planets, and where the effects of organizing forces are
just beginning to become manifest. It resembles a vast everglade filled
with tangled vegetation and uncouth growths, but where the fertile
soil, once cleared and drained, is capable of producing an enormous
harvest.
On either side of the Belt, but far removed from it, shine the two
great stars of Orion, Alpha (α), or Betelgeuse (from an Arabic phrase
meaning the “Armpit of the Central One”), and Beta (β), or Rigel (from
an Arabic phrase meaning the “Leg of the Giant”). These stars differ
remarkably in color, Betelgeuse being orange-hued, and Rigel white.
Although Betelgeuse takes precedence in the Greek-letter ranking, it is
variable in brightness, sometimes exceeding Rigel in brilliance, and
sometimes falling below it. The changes are uncertain in a long and as
yet unascertained period. There is here an opportunity for an amateur
to make valuable observations. But such observations must be continued
over a considerable period of years.
Both stars are of immense actual magnitude. Their distance is so great
that no trustworthy estimate of their parallax has yet been made.
Rigel was put by Newcomb in his “XM” class, to which we have several
times referred. It is without doubt one of the mightiest suns in the
universe. It is also a double, and one of the finest in the sky.
Close to its flaming rays the telescope reveals a small, intensely
blue star. The distance is about 9″.5. In its general aspect Rigel
resembles Vega, but the latter has a more decided blue tint. Scientific
photometry gives the precedence in brightness to Vega, which is ranked
as of magnitude 0.1, while Rigel is 0.3, which means that the first is
one-tenth, and the second three-tenths of a magnitude below the 0 rank.
It is very interesting to bring Rigel and Betelgeuse close together
with a good sextant and then note the difference in their color.
The star Gamma (γ), or Bellatrix, the “Amazon” or “Female Warrior,”
marks the left shoulder of the imaginary giant. Astrological
superstition connects this star with the fortunes of women. Kappa (κ),
or Saiph, “Sword” (although it is far from the Sword), is in the right
knee of the figure. The head is marked by a little triangular group
of stars, the chief of which is Lambda (λ), a fine double, yellow and
purplish; distance 4″.5. The “lion’s hide” which Orion is represented
as carrying on his left arm like a shield is shown by a bending row
of small stars, beginning with Pi (π) and running upward between
Bellatrix and Aldebaran in Taurus. The reader who is not provided
with a telescope is advised, at least, to employ an opera-glass in
sweeping over the whole space included in Orion. It is a region
superb in its beauty and grandeur. Around the Belt, particularly, the
sky is filled with sparkling multitudes infinitely varied in size,
color, and grouping. As already said, this part of the firmament
contains an enormous spiral nebula, which, although it can only be
seen in photographs, seems to manifest its presence to the eye by
the significant arrangement of small stars in curving lines. A word
should be added about the star Zeta, or Alnitah, at the southeastern
end of the Belt. It is a triple, very remarkable for the indescribable
color of its second largest component. The Russian astronomer Struve
could find nothing exactly resembling it in tone in the whole gamut
of spectral colors, and he invented a special name to describe
it--_olivacea-sub-rubicunda_, which may be translated “ruddy-olive.” It
is 2″.5 from its larger companion. The third star is very faint, and
distant 56″. When the telescope is directed to the star Sigma (σ) there
comes into view an astonishing double group of stars, among which such
colors as pale blue, “grape-red,” ruddy, and “gray” have been detected.
The effect upon the mind of seeing such combinations of tinted suns
transcends all power of description. With the feeling of pleasure that
they give goes a sense of staggering wonder.
West of Orion, beginning near Rigel, is seen the constellation
Eridanus, the River Po. Its stars are interesting for their plainly
streaming tendency rather than for their individual peculiarities.
Rising slightly from the neighborhood of Rigel, the stream runs in a
graceful curve under Taurus, and continues westward until it meets
Cetus, where it turns downward toward the horizon, and then sweeps back
eastward again, disappearing behind the southern horizon below Orion
and Lepus. It has no large star visible in northern latitudes, but in
the southern hemisphere it contains one of the brightest stars in the
sky, Achernar, the “End of the River.” All of the ancients saw a river
in this part of the sky, a fact which does not surprise the observer
when he has once noted the arrangement of the stars of Eridanus. Its
stars are so numerous that the old uranographers seem to have grown
weary of attaching letters to them; or rather, perhaps, the alphabet
was too short to answer the demand, for no less than nine of them,
beginning from the one thus lettered in Chart V, are called Tau (τ), as
τ¹, τ², τ³, etc. (For the origin of the association of Eridanus with
the River Po, and with the story of Phaeton, see _Astronomy with the
Naked Eye_).
The constellation Lepus, the Hare, below Orion, and marking the place
where Eridanus turns finally to flow into the far south, is noteworthy
only for its groupings of stars. It contains one star too faint to be
seen with the naked eye near the western border of the constellation,
below and to the right of the little group under Rigel, in Chart V,
which is so intensely crimson that Hind likened its appearance to a
_blood drop_.
We turn next to Taurus. On account of the beauty of Aldebaran and
the Pleiades, this constellation hardly falls behind Orion in
attractiveness. Aldebaran (Arabic _Al Dabaran_, the “Follower”) is the
chief star of the constellation and the leader of the group called
the Hyades, a name which Lewis derives from the Greek word ὕειυ, to
rain, because their rising was connected with the beginning of the
rainy season. Popularly the group is known as the “Letter A,” whose
form it imitates, although it is usually seen nearly upside down.
The letter V would perhaps better represent our view of it. It is a
glorious sight with an opera-glass. Aldebaran is distinctly red, but
of a peculiar tone, which has frequently been called rose-red. Its
redness is certainly unlike the orange tone of Betelgeuse. When gazing
at it in a fanciful mood, I have often likened it imaginatively to
an apple-blossom in color. Flammarion has translated the Hebrew name
of this star, _Aleph_, as “God’s Eye.” Taurus, he says, is the most
ancient of the signs of the zodiac, the first that the Precession
of the Equinoxes placed at the head of the signs, and he adds that
observational astronomy appears to have been founded at the epoch
when the Vernal Equinox lay close to Aldebaran--_i. e._, about three
thousand years before the commencement of our era.
The beauty of Aldebaran, the singularity of the figure shaped by its
attendants, the charming effect produced by the flocks of little
stars, the Deltas and the Thetas, in the middle of the arms of the
letter, and the richness of the stellar groundwork of the cluster, all
combine to make the Hyades one of the most memorable objects in the
sky; but no one can describe it, because the starry heavens cannot be
put into words. Terrestrial analogies, and phrases applied to things
seen on the earth, utterly fail to convey the impressions made by such
spectacles. I can only again urge the reader to examine the Hyades
with a good opera-glass on a clear night when there is no moonlight to
interfere. Some one once said, “If you would test your appreciation of
poetry, read Milton’s _Lycidas_”; so I would say, If you would know
how you are affected by nature’s masterpieces in the sky, look at the
Hyades.
The stars Theta (θ) and Sigma (σ) are both naked-eye doubles for sharp
eyes. Try if you can see both of the pairs.
The Hyades represent the head of the imaginary bull, Aldebaran
standing for the eye, while rows of stars running up toward Zeta (ζ)
and Beta (β) figure the “golden horns.” The Pleiades, the “Atlantid
Nymphs,” hang on the shoulder. They form a much more compact group
than the Hyades, and possess no large star, their chief brilliant,
Alcyone--Eta(η)--being only of the third magnitude. But the effect of
their combination is very striking and beautiful. In looking at them
one can never refrain from quoting Tennyson’s famous lines in which
they are described as glittering “like a swarm of fireflies tangled
in a silver braid.” The adjective silvery exactly describes them. If
you happen to glance at the sky at a point many degrees away from the
place where they shine, your eye will inevitably be drawn to them.
They have greater attractive power than a single large star, and the
effect of their intermingled rays is truly fascinating. With an
opera-glass they look like the glimmering candles on a Christmas-tree.
Their mythological history and the many strange traditions pertaining
to them I have described elsewhere, and shall not repeat here; but it
should be said that there is not in all the sky any object comparable
with the Pleiades in influence over the human imagination. The fancy
of Maedler that Alcyone was the central sun of the universe, and the
inference, so popular at one time, that it might be the very seat of
the Almighty, have vanished in the limbo of baseless traditions; but
the mystic charm of the Pleiades has been increased by the photographic
discovery that they are involved in a wonderful mass of tangled nebulæ.
Their distance is unknown, but evidently very great, some having put it
at 250 light-years, corresponding to about 1,450,000,000,000,000 miles!
If this is correct, Alcyone may be really one of the most gigantic suns
in the universe. They appear to be travelling together like a flock of
birds.
It is always an interesting question how many stars in the cluster
can be seen with the naked eye. Many persons can detect only six, but
better, or more trained, eyes see seven, or even nine. The telescope
and photography reveal thousands thickly sprinkled over the space of
sky that they occupy, or immediately around them. How many of these
are actually connected with the group is unknown. One of the most
persistent legends of antiquity is that of the “Lost Pleiad.” Says Miss
Clerke, in her _System of the Stars_:
“That they ‘were seven who now are six’ is asserted by almost all
the nations of the earth from Japan to Nigritia, and variants of the
classical story of the ‘Lost Pleiad’ are still repeated by sable
legend-mongers in Victoria, by headhunters in Borneo, by fetish
worshippers amid the mangrove swamps of the Gold Coast. An impression
thus widely diffused must either have spread from a common source or
originated in an obvious fact; and it is at least possible that the
veiled face of the seventh Atlantid may typify a real loss of light in
a prehistorically conspicuous star.”
The name Pleiades is derived from the Greek πλεἵν, to sail, because
their heliacal rising occurred at the time when navigation opened in
the seas of Greece, and their heliacal setting at the time of its close.
“... Rude winter comes
Just when the Pleiades begin to set.”
But their religious significance seems always to have exceeded their
practical importance as a sign of the seasons, and from the temples
on the Acropolis of Athens to the sanctuaries of Mexico, Yucatan, and
Peru they were regarded with reverence and awe. Modern popular fancies
have been less reverential, and Alcyone and her attendants have been
degraded to the figure of a “hen and her chickens.” Our red-skinned
predecessors on this continent were more poetical, for they saw in the
Pleiades a group of lost children, and in old China they were starry
sisters busy with their needlework.
High overhead, above Orion and Taurus, gleams Capella, the chief star
of the constellation Auriga, the “Charioteer.” This is also a white
star, but no correct eye would confuse it with Rigel or Vega. It has
none of the sapphire tint that is mingled in their rays, but is rather
of the whiteness of cream. It is a very great star, not only in its
apparent brilliance, but in actual luminosity. With a parallax of
0″.09, Newcomb calculated its luminosity at one hundred and twenty
times that of the sun. It is a spectroscopic binary, the invisible
companion revolving round it in a period of one hundred and four days.
In spectroscopic character it closely resembles the sun, being in the
same stage of development. Vogel’s observations indicate that it is
flying away from us at a speed of more than a million and a quarter
miles per day; but, in contradiction to this, some have thought that it
is increasing in brightness. A little elongated triangle of stars below
and somewhat to the west of Capella serves to render its recognition
certain to the beginner in star-gazing. In the evenings of early
November, when one is in the northeast and the other in the northwest,
it is interesting to compare Capella with Vega, both in brightness and
in color. In late January evenings Capella is near the zenith for the
middle latitudes of the United States, and at such times is a superb
object. The Milky Way pouring through Auriga increases the beauty of
the spectacle.