Bedford inquirer. [volume] (Bedford, Pa.) 1857-1884, 1868-03-20
VoLUHE no. ~.
THE STAR SIRIUS

W hosoever ventures abroad these clear
winter evenings cannot fail TO be struck with
| the impressive maeni6cence or the sfarrv
heavens The eye Of the observer IA Flaz.
zled with the sparkling radiance Of thou
sands OF stars of various col0rs and mapni.
tudes, which stad the vault of heaven on al
sides. Among the celestial host may be
seen the celebrated stars aud groups men
toned long before the time Of Homer.
.'Canst thou hind the sweet influence of the
Pleidaes, or loose the bands of Orion ?
Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his sea
sons or canst thou guide Arcturus with
his sons9p
Among these brilliant jewels Of heaven,
now visible for while in wintry skies, is
one OF surprising lustre, and Of great his
torle interest. The eye viii readily select
the MazZar0th Of Job, the Sothis of the old
Egyptians, the Sirius or our own tirnee
This peerless star lies eastward Of Orion on
the celestial sphere; and arrives at the me-
rIdlan, az this season, about ten O'Clock in
the evening One cannot gaze long at this
splendid star,-glorious In its solitary gran
deur-without having feelings of awe and
admiration awakened 10 him. Its pure, sill
very radiance seems to come from the
depths inhabited By the Eons, ray strayed
from the Eternal Light of the Universe.
Three thousand years before the Christian
era, Sirius rose heliacally at the time of the
summer solstice in the northern hemisphere
The coincidence was noted by the Egyp-
tlans, and they also noted the e0ntempora-
neous rise of the sacred Nile. These cir
cumstsnees rendered Sirius an object Of the
highest interest among the Egyptians
They believed it to be the celestial abode
OF the soul of Isis, and it was an object of
reverence and worship. The time of its
hehacal rising was chosen by them to mark
the beginning Of the civil year IN their cal
endar. The most brilliant and conspicuous
star in the heavens thus became the most
important, In the Egyptian social, political,
and religious systems
Perhaps the most astonishing fact in its
history isit change of color. At the time
It bore so conspicuous part in the institu-
tons OF Egypt, II was a fiery red star, and
SO 1t was in the days of PtoIemy, a century
after the birth Of our Saviour. 1t Is now,
and has been for ages, pure white star,
unsurpassed in this respect When this
change Of color took place is unknown 1t
implies some mighty change in its physical
constitution-a change for which no astrono-
mer has yet ventured to assign probable
cause.
The ingenuity and skill of astronomers
have been exercised to discover the magni-
tude and the distance Of Sirius Its dis
tance from our globe is so remote that it is
nearly outside the limit beyond which 1t is
impossible to fathom the celestial spaces,
and hence It is only approximately deter
mined. Assuming its parallax to be fifteen
hundreths of second, the amount assigned
it by astronomers, its distance from us
would not be less than thirteen hundred
thousand times the earth distance from the
sun. Ii would require light more than
twenty-five years TO fly over this distance
Ii follows from this that if Sirius had been
destroyed In lS47, it would still be visible
in the heavens.
At this assumed distance, Herschel esti-
mates its intrinsic splendor at two hundred
and twenty-five times that of the sun. Ina
CINE our sun increased 10 this great ratiol
Within few years this Justly celebrated
star has been an object of renewed scientific
interest. Long ago, Haley discovered that
il was slowly wandering in the celestial spa
ces; that since the time Of Hipparchas ii
had traversed space in the celestial sphere
equal TO one apparent diameter of the moon
Bessel, q celebrated German astronomer,
after, 4 long series of observations on Sirius,
declared that It's movement was not uniform
but irregular, and that its irregularities could
only nationally be accounted for on the
theory of its being double star. AS its
duplicity could not be seen with any tele-
scope, he concluded that the companion
might be non-luminous. Several astrono-
mers we're attracted to the consideration Of
this mystery, and the labors of each only re-
suited in the confirmation Of the suspicious
of Bessel, without discovering the real
cause.
FINALLY, early in 1862, Mr.. Stafford of
Cambridge, now Director Of the Chicago
Observatory, undertook a mathematical
of these irregularities Of Sirius, In
declination; and he arrived at the eonclu-
sion thatthe motion of Sirius in deelination
was not eniform, and that the want of uni
formity was due to the presence of some in
visible mass in the system of Sirius
Hardly had this announcement been pub
liclymadc, when Mr.. Clark lifted his colos-
sal achromatietelescope still un6nished-to
the skies and pointing it to Sirius, detected
at once the hitherto invisible disturber of its
Thus was the conjecture of
Bessel and the prediction of Stafford verified
BIZ actual observation Ii was triumph in
magnitude and importance hardly inferior
to the discovery of the planet Neptune. =
Boston Courier