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THE CHILDREN'S BOOK OF STARS
THE CHILDREN'S BOOK OF STARS
MITTON
A.&C. BLACK
[Illustration: THE MOON-CHILD MUST KEEP ON RUNNING ROUND HER. P. 11.]
THE CHILDREN'S BOOK OF STARS
+-------------------------------------------------+
| BY THE SAME AUTHOR |
| |
| CHILDREN'S BOOK OF LONDON |
| |
| CONTAINING 12 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS |
| IN COLOUR BY JOHN WILLIAMSON |
| PRICE =6s.= |
| |
| 'The stories are told in a way that is bound |
| to rivet attention, and the historical sketches|
| will leave a lasting impression on the minds |
| of young readers which will be very useful |
| when their studies in history become more |
| advanced.'--_Scotsman._ |
| |
| |
| ANIMAL AUTOBIOGRAPHIES |
| |
| THE DOG |
| |
| WITH 12 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN |
| COLOUR BY J. WILLIAMSON |
| |
| PRICE =6s.= |
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| 'A true life history, written "out of the |
| fulness of first-hand knowledge" by an author |
| who is thoroughly acquainted with all the |
| ways of "the friend of man."'--_Glasgow |
| Herald._ |
| |
| 'The story is admirably told in clear and |
| fascinating language.'--_Freeman's Journal._ |
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| A. & C. BLACK. SOHO SQUARE. LONDON, W. |
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AGENTS
AMERICA THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
64 & 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
CANADA THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA, LTD.
27 RICHMOND STREET WEST, TORONTO
INDIA MACMILLAN & COMPANY, LTD.
MACMILLAN BUILDING, BOMBAY
309 BOW BAZAAR STREET, CALCUTTA
THE
CHILDREN'S BOOK
OF
STARS
BY
G. E. MITTON
AUTHOR OF
'THE CHILDREN'S BOOK OF LONDON,' 'ANIMAL AUTOBIOGRAPHIES:
THE DOG,' ETC.
LONDON
ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK
1907
_Published September, 1907_
PREFACE
It was the intention of the late Agnes Clerke to write the preface to
this 'Children's Book of Stars.' Miss Clerke took a warm and sympathetic
interest in the authoress and her work, but her lamented death occurred
before this kindly intention could be fulfilled.
I cannot pretend to write adequately as her substitute, but I could not
resist the appeal made to me by the author, in the name and for the sake
of her dear friend and mine, to write a few words of introduction.
I am in no way responsible either for the plan or for any portion of
this work, but I can commend it as a book, written in a simple and
pleasant style, calculated to awaken the interest of intelligent
children, and to enable parents otherwise ignorant or astronomy to
answer many of those puzzling questions which such children often put.
DAVID GILL.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
This little work is the outcome of many suggestions on the part of
friends who were anxious to teach their small children something of the
marvels of the heavens, but found it exceedingly difficult to get hold
of a book wherein the intense fascination of the subject was not lost in
conventional phraseology--a book in which the stupendous facts were
stated in language simple enough to be read aloud to a child without
paraphrase.
Whatever merit there may be in the present work is due entirely to my
friend Agnes Clerke, the well-known writer on astronomy; the faults are
all my own. She gave me the impetus to begin by her warm encouragement,
and she helped me to continue by hearing every chapter read as it was
written, and by discussing its successor and making suggestions for it.
Thus she heard the whole book in MS. A week after the last chapter had
been read to her I started on a journey lasting many months, and while
I was in the Far East the news reached me of her death, by which the
world is the poorer. For her sake, as he has stated, her friend Sir
David Gill, K.C.B., kindly undertook to supply the missing preface.
G. E. MITTON.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I PAGE
THE EARTH 1
CHAPTER II
HANGING IN SPACE 13
CHAPTER III
THE SHINING MOON 21
CHAPTER IV
THE EARTH'S BROTHERS AND SISTER 32
CHAPTER V
FOUR SMALL WORLDS 48
CHAPTER VI
FOUR LARGE WORLDS 67
CHAPTER VII
THE SUN 89
CHAPTER VIII
SHINING VISITORS 103
CHAPTER IX
SHOOTING STARS AND FIERY BALLS 120
CHAPTER X
THE GLITTERING HEAVENS 135
CHAPTER XI
THE CONSTELLATIONS 148
CHAPTER XII
WHAT THE STARS ARE MADE OF 159
CHAPTER XIII
RESTLESS STARS 170
CHAPTER XIV
THE COLOURS OF THE STARS 176
CHAPTER XV
TEMPORARY AND VARIABLE STARS 188
CHAPTER XVI
STAR CLUSTERS AND NEBULAE 197
ILLUSTRATIONS
PRINTED IN COLOUR
THE MOON-CHILD MUST KEEP ON RUNNING ROUND HER _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
THE EARTH AND MOON HANGING IN SPACE 16
THE ENGLISH SUMMER AND WINTER 40
JUPITER AND ONE OF HIS MOONS 70
THE PLANET SATURN AND TWO OF HIS MOONS 78
FLAMES FROM THE SUN 100
THE COMET IN THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY 104
A STICK THRUST INTO THE WATER APPEARS CROOKED 114
CONSTELLATIONS NEAR THE POLE STAR 150
ORION AND HIS NEIGHBOURS 154
THE SPECTRUM OF THE SUN AND SIRIUS 168
ILLUSTRATIONS
IN BLACK AND WHITE
PAGE
THE MOON _facing_ 24
AN ECLIPSE OF THE MOON 28
AN ECLIPSE OF THE SUN 29
THE MOON RAISING THE TIDES 30
COMPARATIVE SIZES OF THE PLANETS 35
DIFFERENT PHASES OF VENUS 51
ORBITS OF MARS, THE EARTH, VENUS, AND MERCURY 55
MAP OF MARS _facing_ 56
ORBITS OF THE EARTH AND MARS 63
JUPITER AND HIS PRINCIPAL MOONS 72
SUN-SPOTS _facing_ 98
A GREAT COMET " 118
THE GREAT NEBULA IN ANDROMEDA " 202
THE CHILDREN'S BOOK OF STARS
CHAPTER I
THE EARTH
It is a curious fact that when we are used to things, we often do not
notice them, and things which we do every day cease to attract our
attention. We find an instance of this in the curious change that comes
over objects the further they are removed from us. They grow smaller and
smaller, so that at a distance a grown-up person looks no larger than a
doll; and a short stick planted in the ground only a few feet away
appears as long as a much longer one at ten times the distance. This
process is going on all round us every minute: houses, trees, buildings,
animals, all seem larger or smaller in proportion to their distance from
us. Sometimes I have seen a row of raindrops hanging on a bar by the
window. When the sun catches one of them, it shines so brilliantly that
it is as dazzling as a star; but my sense tells me it is a raindrop, and
not a star at all. It is only because it is so near it seems as bright
and important as a mighty star very, very far away.
We are so much accustomed to this fact that we get into a habit of
judging the distance of things by their size. If we see two lights
shining on a dark night, and one is much larger than the other, we think
that the bright one must be nearer to us; yet it need not necessarily be
so, for the two lights might possibly be at the same distance from us,
and one be large and the other small. There is no way in which we can
tell the truth by just looking at them. Now, if we go out on any fine
moonlight night and look up at the sky, we shall see one object there
apparently much larger than any other, and that is the moon, so the
question that occurs to us at once is, Is the moon really very much
larger than any of the stars, or does it only seem so because it is very
much nearer to us? As a matter of fact, the moon is one of the smallest
objects in view, only, as it is our nearest neighbour, it appears very
conspicuous. Having learned this, we shall probably look about to see
what else there is to attract attention, and we may notice one star
shining very brilliantly, almost like a little lamp, rather low down in
the sky, in that part of it where the sun has lately set. It is so
beautifully bright that it makes all the others look insignificant in
comparison, yet it is not really large compared with the others, only,
as it comes nearer to us than anything else in the sky except the moon,
it looks larger than it has any right to do in comparison with the
others.
After this we might jump to the conclusion that all the bright large
stars are really small and near to us, and all the faintly shining ones
large and far away. But that would not be true at all, for some bright
ones are very far away and some faint ones comparatively near, so that
all we can do is to learn about them from the people who have studied
them and found out about them, and then we shall know of our own
knowledge which of them seem bright only because they are nearer than
the others, and which are really very, very brilliant, and so still
shine brightly, though set in space at an almost infinite distance from
us.
The sun, as we all know, appears to cross the sky every day; he gets up
in the east and drops down in the west, and the moon does the same,
only the moon is unlike the sun in this, that it changes its shape
continually. We see a crescent moon growing every night larger and
larger, until it becomes full and fat and round, and then it grows
thinner and thinner, until it dies away; and after a little while it
begins again, and goes through all the same changes once more. I will
tell you why this is so further on, when we have a chapter all about the
moon.
If you watch the stars quietly for at least five minutes, you will see
that they too are moving steadily on in the same way as the sun and
moon. Watch one bright star coming out from behind a chimney-pot, and
after about five minutes you will see that it has changed its place. Yet
this is not true of all, for if we watch carefully we shall find that
some, fairly high up in the sky, do not appear to move at all. The few
which are moving so slowly that they seem to us to stand still are at a
part of the sky close to the Pole Star, so called because it is always
above the North Pole of the earth. I will explain to you how to find it
in the sky for yourselves later on, but now you can ask anyone to point
it out. Watch it. It appears to be fixed in one place, while the other
stars are swinging round it in circles. In fact, it is as if we on the
earth were inside a great hollow globe or ball, which continually turned
round, with the Pole Star near the top of the globe; and you know that
if you put your finger on the spot at the top of a spinning globe or
ball, you can hold it there while all the rest of the ball runs round.
Now, if you had to explain things to yourself, you would naturally
think: 'Here is the great solid earth standing still, and the sun and
moon go round it; the stars are all turning round it too, just as if
they were fixed on to the inside of a hollow globe; we on the earth are
in the middle looking up at them; and this great globe is slowly
wheeling round us night by night.'
In the childhood of the world men believed that this was really
true--that the earth was the centre of the universe, that the sun and
moon and all the hosts of heaven were there solely to light and benefit
us; but as the world grew wiser the wonders of creation were fathomed
little by little. Some men devoted their whole lives to watching the
heavens, and the real state of things was gradually revealed to them.
The first great discovery was that of the daily movement of the earth,
its rotation on its own axis, which makes it appear as if all these
shining things went round it. It is indeed a very difficult matter to
judge which of two objects is moving unless we can compare them both
with something outside. You must have noticed this when you are sitting
in a train at a station, and there is another train on the other side of
yours. For if one of the trains moves gently, either yours or the other,
you cannot tell which one it is unless you look at the station platform;
and if your position remains the same in regard to that, you know that
your train is still standing, while the other one beside it has begun to
move. And I am quite sure that there is no one of us who has not, at one
time or another, stood on a bridge and watched the water running away
underneath until we felt quite dizzy, and it seemed as if the water were
standing still and the bridge, with ourselves on it, was flying swiftly
away backwards. It is only when we turn to the banks and find them
standing still, that we realize the bridge is not moving, and that it is
the running water that makes it seem to do so. These everyday instances
show us how difficult it is to judge whether we are moving or an outside
object unless we have something else to compare with it. And the
marvellous truth is that, instead of the sun and moon and stars rolling
round the earth, it is the earth that is spinning round day by day,
while the sun and the stars are comparatively still; and, though the
moon does move, yet when we see her get up in the east and go down in
the west that is due to our own movement and not to hers.
The earth turns completely round once in a day and night. If you take an
orange and stick a knitting-needle through it, and hold it so that the
needle is not quite straight up but a little slanting, and then twirl it
round, you will get quite a good idea of the earth, though of course
there is no great pole like a gigantic needle stuck through it, that is
only to make it easy for you to hold it by. In spinning the orange you
are turning it as the earth turns day by day, or, as astronomers express
it, as it rotates on its axis.
There is a story of a cruel Eastern King who told a prisoner that he
must die if he did not answer three questions correctly, and the
questions were very difficult; this is one of them:
'How long would it take a man to go round the earth if he never stopped
to eat or drink on the way?'
And the prisoner answered promptly: 'If he rose with the sun and kept
pace with it all day, and never stopped for a moment to eat or drink, he
would take just twenty-four hours, Your Royal Highness.' For in those
days it was supposed that the sun went round the earth.
Everyone is so remarkably clever nowadays that I am sure there will be
someone clever enough to object that, if what I have said is true, there
would be a great draught, for the air would be rushing past us. But, as
a matter of fact, the air goes with us too. If you are inside a railway
carriage with the windows shut you do not feel the rush of air, because
the air in the carriage travels with you; and it is the same thing on
the earth. The air which surrounds the earth clings to it and goes round
with it, so there is no continuous breeze from this cause.
But the spinning round on its own axis is not the earth's only movement,
for all the time it is also moving on round the sun, and once in a whole
year it completes its journey and comes back to the place from whence it
started. Thus the turning round like a top or rotating on its axis makes
the day and night, and the going in a great ring or revolving round the
sun makes the years.
Our time is divided into other sections besides days and years. We have,
for instance, weeks and months. The weeks have nothing to do with the
earth's movements; they are only made by man to break up the months;
but the months are really decided by something over which we have no
control. They are due to the moon, and, as I have said already, the moon
must have a chapter to herself, so we won't say any more about the
months here.
If any friend of ours goes to India or New Zealand or America, we look
upon him as a great traveller; yet every baby who has lived one year on
the earth has travelled millions of miles without the slightest effort.
Every day of our lives we are all flung through space without knowing it
or thinking of it. It is as if we were all shut up in a comfortable
travelling car, and were provided with so many books and pictures and
companions that we never cared to look out of the windows, so that hour
by hour as we were carried along over miles of space we never gave them
a thought. Even the most wonderful car ever made by man rumbles and
creaks and shakes, so that we cannot help knowing it is moving; but this
beautiful travelling carriage of ours called the earth makes never a
creak or groan as she spins in her age-long journey. It is always
astonishing to me that so few people care to look out of the window as
we fly along; most of them are far too much absorbed in their little
petty daily concerns ever to lift their eyes from them. It is true that
sometimes the blinds are down, for the sky is thickly covered with
clouds, and we cannot see anything even if we want to. It is true also
that we cannot see much of the scenery in the daytime, for the sun
shining on the air makes a veil of blue glory, which hides the stars;
but on clear nights we can see on every side numbers of stars quite as
interesting and beautiful as any landscape; and yet millions of people
never look up, never give a thought to the wonderful scenery through
which their car is rushing.
By reason of the onward rush of the earth in space we are carried over a
distance of at least eighteen miles every second. Think of it: as we
draw a breath we are eighteen miles away in space from the point we were
at before, and this goes on unceasingly day and night. These astonishing
facts make us feel how small and feeble we are, but we can take comfort
in the thought that though our bodies are insignificant, the brain of
man, which has discovered these startling facts, must in itself be
regarded as one of the most marvellous of all the mysteries amid which
we live.
Well, we have arrived at some idea of our earth's position; we know
that the earth is turning round day by day, and progressing round the
sun year by year, and that all around lie the sentinel stars, scattered
on a background of infinite space. If you take an older boy or girl and
let him or her stand in the middle to represent the sun, then a smaller
one would be the earth, and the smallest of all the moon; only in truth
we could never get anyone large enough to represent the sun fairly, for
the biggest giant that ever lived would be much too small in proportion.
The one representing the sun must stand in the middle, and turn slowly
round and round. Then let the earth-child turn too, and all the time she
is spinning like a top she must be also hastening on in a big ring round
the sun; but she must not go too fast, for the little moon-child must
keep on running round her all the time. And the moon-child must keep her
face turned always to the earth, so that the earth never sees her back.
That is an odd thing, isn't it? We have never seen the other side of the
moon, which goes round us, always presenting the same face to us.
The earth is not the only world going round the sun; she has many
brothers and a sister; some are nearer to the sun than she is, and some
are further away, but all circle round the great central light-giver in
rings lying one outside the other. These worlds are called planets, and
the earth is one of them, and one of the smaller ones, too, nothing so
great and important as we might have imagined.