"Yes," replied his sister, "and they are as varied in color as the
flowers of the earth. The stars may be called 'The flowers of heaven.'
Longfellow says so beautifully:
"'Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven
Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels.'
"Some of the natives of Australia believe that when the flowers die
on earth they rise on the winds and float away to the fair fields of
heaven, where they flourish forever in immortal beauty. We cannot see
the colors of these flowers of heaven very well, on account of the air
that surrounds the earth. If it were removed, then the dark sky would
seem to be covered with starry flowers of all the colors of the rainbow."
"How beautiful!" said Harry thoughtfully. "How I wish we could see them
that way!"
"But even as it is," said his sister, "you can see some of these colors.
Look at white Sirius, that sometimes seems to me tinged with blue, and
then at red Aldebaran in the eye of the bull, and a creamy star called
Capella just near the Twins. So you can see some of the colors. And now
a few more words about Castor, which is a double star. That is, it is
made up of two bright stars, and they go around each other.
"Professor Ball was once showing the stars through his telescope to some
friends, when he pointed out this double star to them. First of all, he
told them to note the different colors of the stars, for one was white,
the other green. All double stars are of complementary colors. One may
be green and the other red, one blue and the other orange.
"Then Professor Ball told his visitors that the stars went round each
other.
"'Oh, yes!' said one of the visitors. 'I saw them going round in the
telescope.'
"But it was the twinkling that made the stars appear to dance around
each other. In reality, he would have had to remain with his eye at the
telescope more than a hundred years before he could have seen the stars
go completely around each other."