It is a privilege of astronomers to be able to predict events that will
happen in thousands of years to come, and to describe things accurately
though they never saw them, and though nobody else has ever seen them
either. No one has ever yet got to the North Pole, but whenever they
do, we are able to tell them much of what they will see there. We may
leave it to Jules Verne to describe how the journey is to be made, and
how the party are to be kept alive at the North Pole. I shall give a
picture of the changes of the seasons, and of the appearance in the
stars, as seen from thence.
We shall, therefore, prepare to make observations from that very
particular spot on this earth--the North Pole. I suppose that eternal
ice and snow abide there. I don’t think it would be a pleasant
residence. However, we shall arrange to arrive on Midsummer Day,
prepared to make a year’s sojourn. The first question to be settled is
the erection of the hut. In a cold country it is important to give the
right aspect, and we are in the habit of saying that a southerly aspect
is the best and warmest, while the north and the east are suggestive
only of chills and discomfort. But what is a southerly aspect at the
North Pole, or, rather, what is not a southerly aspect? Whatever way
we look from the North Pole we are facing due south. There is no such
thing as east or west; every way is the southward way. This is truly
an odd part of the earth. The only other locality at all resembling it
would be the South Pole, from which all directions would be north.
The sun would be moving all through the day in a fashion utterly unlike
its behavior in our latitudes. There would, of course, be no such thing
as rising and setting. The sun would, indeed, at first seem neither
to go any nearer to the horizon nor to rise any higher above it, but
would simply go round and round the sky. Then it would gradually get
lower and lower, moving round day after day in a sort of spiral, until
at last it would get down so low that it would just graze the horizon,
right round which it would circulate till half the sun was below, and
then until the whole disk had disappeared. Even though the sun had now
vanished, a twilight glow would for some time be continuous. It would
seem to come from a source moving round and round below the horizon,
then gradually the light would become fainter and fainter until at last
the winter of utter and continuous blackness had set in. The first
indications of the return of spring would be detected by a feeble
glow near the horizon, which would seem to move round and round day
after day. Then this glow would pass into a continuous dawn, gradually
increasing until the sun’s edge crept into visibility, and the great
globe would at last begin to climb the heavens by its continual spiral
until midsummer was reached, when the change would go on again as
before.
Our first excursion to the country of Star-land has now been taken, and
we have naturally commenced by studying that sun to which we owe so
much. But we shall have to learn that though our sun is of such vital
importance to us, yet, in magnificence and size, he has many rivals
among the host of stars.