The Vancouver independent. (Vancouver, W.T. [Wash.]) 1875-1910, 1877-04-27
A New Star.

Since first this paper was written, q
new star has appeared in the constellation
Cygnus (the Swami. On the evening of
Nov. Gath, Professor Schmidt, director of
the Athens Observatory, noticed there a
star Of the third magnitude. Not only
was no star of that brightness there be-
fore, or any star visible to the naked eye,
but it was found when catalogues and
charts came to be examined, that no star
had ever been noted there, even in lists
meant to include all stars down to the
tenth magnitude. For instance, Argel-
ander has made such list, and charts
from 1T, showing no less than 1924, 900
stars-that is, hundred times as many
as we can see on the darkest and clear
est night; yet his list showed no star
where the new one had appeared. AS
tronomers do not, however, suppose the
new star is really new, except in the
sense of being seen for the first time.
They know that when last a new star APP
peared in this way it was found to be one
OF Argelanders army of $4,000 stars,
and watching that star (Which had APP
peared in the constellation of the North
ern Crown in May, 1860, they found
that though it faded gradually out of
sight to ordinary vision, the telescope
could still follow it, until it had sunk to
the tenth magnitude, at which degree of
luster it remained and still remains.
No doubt if we had had full lists of all
stars down to the fifteenth, or perhaps
the twentieth, magnitude, we should
have found that the new star in Cygnus
was simply an old faint star which had
frightened up suddenly, and remained
for time as one among the stars
adjoining our skies.
Examined with an instrument called
the spectroscope the new star gave very
strange account of itself. 1t was found
to be emitting the same sort of light rs
other stars; but, besides that light, it
emitted such light as comes from in
tensely heated vapors. Among the vap-
ors in that star thus Qor the time) in
tensely hot, where hydrogen, the vapors
of the metals sodium and magnesium,
and vapor known to be present in
enormous quantities in our suns outer
atmosphere, as seen during times of total
eclipse. All these vapors surround our
sun; and it is very probable that if any
thing caused our sun to blaze out with
greatly increased light and heat, folks
living on world circling round some
other sun would find the same peculiari-
ties in our suns light as we have found
in the light Of the new star in the Swan.
What caused that star to blaze out in
that strange way, we do not know. We
should like to know, because we might
then determine whether tho cause which
had so disturbed that sun might not be
one from which our own sun may one
day suffer. Whatever the cause was, its
effects did not last very long. In
week the new star had sunk to the fifth
magnitude, in another week to the sixth,
in yet another to the seventh, since which
time December 15th) it has very slowly
diminished, and is still January 5th)
above the eighth magnitude. But al
though the unusual light and heat of that
remote sun faded thus quickly away, yet
if inhabited worlds circled around that
sun, the cooling of their sun must have
come far too late to save those creatures
lives. If our sun were to shine even
but for twenty-four hours with several
hundred times its usual heat, it is GER
tain that every creature on the earth
would be destroyed, and when the sun
returned to its usual luster it would shine
on a system Of worlds ON which not q
single living creature was left. - st.
Nicholas.